Cracking
by Lynse
Summary: The mended timeline starts to crack and, after a bit of investigating, the Doctor realizes why he's having so much trouble mending those cracks—especially once he runs into Alia and discovers who she leaped into. Follows Splintering/Splicing.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: So, one more Doctor Who/Quantum Leap crossover, at the specific request of Elvaro and the subsequent encouragement of Questfan. I highly recommend reading _Patchwork_, _Splintering_, and especially _Splicing_ before reading _Cracking_, or the story will be more confusing than it is already bound to be (just ask anyone who has read any of my other stories). It follows _The Waters of Mars_ for the Doctor and is before _Return_ for Alia, for whom it has been a few years since _Splicing_ and an undisclosed amount of time since _Deliver Us from Evil_.

_Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, and I make no money from this work of fiction!_

* * *

><p>The Doctor had known what he'd been facing, back when he'd been up against that fixed point on Mars, back when he'd defied the laws of Time because he couldn't stand seeing any more death. He'd nearly destroyed everything, then. He was very, very fortunate—not to mention very, <em>very<em> humbled—that one human woman had understood the gravity of the situation and had done what he hadn't been able to do, what he _should_ have done, and had saved the timeline by sacrificing herself.

To say that he had overstepped his boundaries would be putting it mildly.

He had sorely needed to be put in his place.

He had been.

But he hadn't known when to stop, and there had been no one there to stop him.

Which meant that he was still dealing with the consequences, the aftermath of his mistake, even if it was not as great as it could have been.

He could have destroyed the entire future, completely shifting it from its proper path—probably irreparably. He could have been facing a complete deterioration of the timeline as he knew it, with the future being shunted along the nearest available path into the most likely parallel world, with any distinct differences being lost immediately. As it was, he was just dealing with cracks.

They were a tad more extensive than he would like to admit to anyone else, now that he had a chance to inspect them a bit closer.

After that business with the timeline splitting into parallels and his subsequent splicing of them, he _really_ had to watch it when something cracked. It gave him a bit of a headache as it was, seeing as he'd nearly splintered, and he, originally, hadn't been the one to do the splicing. _That_ was the work of his other self. But, because his other self had managed to stop the splintering process and patch him up, sealing up the cracks that had threatened to break him apart much in the same way that he had to seal up the cracks in the timeline now, he'd as good as spliced the parallels himself, because, technically, he _had_ done it.

It wasn't like remembering something he'd purposely forgotten. Those memories always seemed to fit, filling in a gap that he hadn't known had been there. But it wasn't like having false memories forcibly implanted, either, because these memories were real, and they were actually his memories. And it wasn't precisely that they _didn't_ fit, although that's not to say that they weren't shoved into place between what he'd originally done. It was more…. Well, he couldn't really say what it was like, not accurately. However much he knew they were his own memories, he also knew that they were products of a changed timeline. He knew them as well as he knew the rest of his memories, but they still had that feeling to them, whenever he recalled them.

Of course, it had been another one of his mistakes that had gotten him into that mess, with the parallels and the splintering. He'd gone and changed something and hadn't tracked the consequences as closely as he generally did. He'd meant well, yes. And as far as he _had_ traced it, initially, nothing had been noticeably wrong. He would have picked up on it later, of course, if he had continued following his timeline as he ought to have, but when it had changed, and he'd started splintering, well, then he'd _really_ noticed that something had gone wrong.

It should have knocked some sense into him. It should have reminded him of everything he'd been preaching. It should have stopped him from doing something so distinctly _wrong_ even when he _meant_ well, _meant_ for it to end better than it had, originally. Happier. But the greater consequences…. He'd ignored those greater consequences, just that once. He had been determined to find another way to set things right. He had been determined to guide the timeline along the proper path. He had been determined to control it, making sure it still ended up where it ought to, _without_ all the pain and loss and suffering. There was far too much of that as it was.

But he'd been wrong.

And he hadn't had the sense to see that. He'd ignored it. He'd gone against his better judgement, against his instincts, against all his learning, even though he'd known, on some level, that he'd face something like that. That he'd make that choice, and choose poorly. He'd caught a glimpse of it when he'd been splintering. It had preyed on him, that glimpse, but he hadn't been able to think straight as it was, and there had been so much other stuff that he could see, all at once. And he'd known even as he'd seen it that he shouldn't look, shouldn't peek, but he hadn't been able to block it out. He'd been horrified, but he'd been resigned to it, just as he'd been resigned to the fact that he was going to splinter, shattering apart, scarring who knew how many timelines in the process.

Even when he hadn't, in the end, he hadn't ever looked back, recalling what he'd seen so that he could prepare for it. He'd shoved it to the back of his mind. He'd _refused_ to look. To look behind him and see ahead…. It would have been terrible to know. But that knowledge would, perhaps, have stopped him from doing what he'd done. But even knowing that he would, eventually, make that mistake, hadn't stopped him from making it. He'd blatantly ignored that warning, that spoiler, along with everything else.

And now the timeline, in a slightly weakened state from his previous notable mistake, despite being spliced, was cracking—because he'd been foolish enough, _arrogant_ enough, to make another terrible mistake, however surrounded with good intentions it had been.

So now, he was back to a bit of temporal patchwork, trying to fix his own mistakes before it was too late.

Trouble was, he'd been at it for a while now.

And the cracks weren't sealing.

Or, rather, they weren't _staying_ sealed.

And he could only patch something so many times before a change became permanent.

But he really shouldn't need to be patching these more than once; twice, if the crack was particularly deep. And most of them weren't. Most of them were still just surface cracks. Easy to fill. At least, normally easy to fill.

If his repairs weren't holding, then it meant that he hadn't found the source of the problem.

Which meant that while he might have been responsible for a few of the cracks, he wasn't responsible for all of them.

Which meant that he had to find out what was and stop it.

Immediately.

Preferably, before everything cracked and crumbled.

* * *

><p>"Well, don't you think so?"<p>

Alia blinked, staring at the young man in front of her, trying to get her bearings. "Of course," she agreed, wishing that there were another person here to bear the brunt of the conversation while she sorted out what they were talking about.

"Then why say that Marie ought to break it off?"

Oh. Relationships. Easy enough, then. Alia smiled. "Because Marie can do a lot better than him." She leaned forward to sip her soda from the straw in her glass, keeping her eyes on the man in front of her.

"Brian's top of his class!"

Alia shrugged. "You asked my opinion. That's what it is. There are more things to look for in a man than just brains."

The man gaped at her. "Grace!" he admonished. Alia just smiled. The man still looked flustered. Alia had seen the look enough times to know that he would cast around for some excuse to leave, or change the topic, or otherwise wrap up their current conversation. She left him to it, taking the time to get a better look at him.

He was probably in his mid twenties. Brown hair, brown eyes, glasses, and fairly average-looking overall. He was sitting, so she couldn't gauge his height, but he didn't look particularly gangly. He looked like the sort of person who blended right into the crowd. Nothing special, not on the surface. She vaguely wondered if she had to kill him, or if she was going to get off easy this time and was simply required to ruin his life.

"Maybe we ought to revise again," the man said.

University student, Alia realized. And a geeky one at that. Probably in the top five of _his_ class. And she was clearly a classmate. Alia sighed, hoping that this leap wouldn't be a long one. She never particularly enjoyed staring at books full of things she didn't understand. "Must we?" she asked, rolling her eyes. "It feels like that's all I've been doing lately." A risky statement, perhaps, but her classmate had said _again_ and _maybe_, meaning he was doubtful as to whether she would agree to what was clearly a repeated action.

She received a crooked smile in response. Right answer, then. "I guess we have, haven't we?"

Silence followed. He was expecting her to say something. Great. She looked at her feet and saw a book bag. Excellent. She snatched it up, saying, "I'll be back in a minute or so. I just want to wash up." She'd spotted the washroom sign in her earlier scans of the café in which they were seated, and now was as good a time as any to find a wallet and some identification to figure out who she was—and what she was studying.

She threw her bag up on the counter with the sinks and began rifling through it. She pulled out a clipboard of notes—whoever she was, she was certainly a messy writer—and a couple of textbooks. Medical textbooks. Great. It wasn't even something she could fake well.

She pulled out an agenda and started flipping through it. Still September, from the looks of it; the leapee was crossing off the days. Already. Not that Alia was about to complain. It told her that today was September 18, 1987. "And you're revising already?" Alia asked in disbelief, not caring that she was talking to herself. "Talk about dedication. You must be a serious student." A bit more rummaging, and her fingers at last closed upon the leapee's wallet. Finally.

She flipped it open. Student card, opposite the California driver's license. "Grace Holloway, is it?" she asked, reading it. "Well, I hope you didn't have any great future plans, because I have the feeling that by the time I'm done, you'll want to drop out of university."

She studied herself in the mirror for a moment, nodded, and picked up her bag and left, not bothering to return to the table where her classmate was waiting for her. Zoey would be along soon, and she didn't need to get into any more conversations where she didn't know what was going on. Until she had more information, she wasn't going to talk to anyone. All she had to do was pretend to be in a rush, and her likelihood of being stopped and questioned would drop. It was always better to act like you had a clear destination in mind. All it took was a bit of practice.

And she'd been doing it for years.

* * *

><p>"Where is she, then?" Zoey asked, sounding rather bored. Thames had been at Lothos for a while now, and she clearly knew he had found something. She didn't get as tetchy as she used to when he didn't have the answer immediately. She didn't appreciate what it took for him to <em>get<em> the answers she expected him to have, but at least she didn't demand them immediately.

Especially since it took longer to get the information when they weren't the ones who had sent Alia wherever she had ended up.

"San Francisco," Thames reported. "September 18, 1987. As a university student, a Grace Holloway."

Zoey smiled slightly. "We'll get a chance to check out the frat boys, then. I do love—"

"Med student," Thames cut in. "If Alia plays her role, attending classes to keep tabs on whoever she's watching, she's not going to have a lot of time."

Zoey snorted. "We don't know if she's supposed to be watching anyone, Thames. We don't know why she's there. It's _your_ job to find out." She let out a bit of a huff. "I do hate it when she's thrown off into one of these unprogrammed leaps. It's terribly difficult to get her back on course."

On course. That was a laugh. They were lucky that they had garnered enough control to keep Alia sequestered to a certain type of assignment—assignments which seemed, at least to him, to be easier than they used to be. But, of course, she still slipped off track every once in a while, and _he_ had to spend countless hours pouring over Lothos, trying to sort it out.

He wouldn't be getting a lot of sleep this week.

And he'd probably have to spend the entirety of it listening to Zoey either complain or gloat.

Another glorious week ahead of him, he was sure. If he was lucky, he'd find out that Alia was there to do something particularly gruesome, and then his work would at least all be worthwhile. Those simpler assignments she'd had recently, like home wrecking—it hadn't been very amusing, not for him. It wasn't the sort of thing you could enjoy if you weren't there to watch it unfold.

But he knew better to complain, and that was why he was still alive and kicking now. That had been one lesson a good many people had been too slow to learn. Besides, survival wasn't just knowing when to keep your mouth shut. It involved a certain mindset, and you either had it or you didn't, because if you simply pretended to have it, you'd slip eventually. And he'd taken great pleasure in finding those people, ferreting them out, tracking them down, making sure they paid the consequences of attempting to fool them.

Of course, he'd hardly gotten through his third rouge of the Project staff when Alia had leaped into Connie LaMotta of Oakland, California, in March of '66. Because after that, he'd been researching everything he could about a certain Dr. Samuel Beckett. Zoey was livid about that, and she had every right to be, as far as he was concerned, because she had paid the price. She and Alia both had been punished for letting Dr. Beckett get away. Alia had really needed to pull her socks up after that to prove her worth before they terminated her, cutting her off from the Project completely.

But the whole meeting with Dr. Beckett had struck an unsettling chord in Thames for a very different reason.

It had reminded him, all too strongly, of the last time a scientist had slipped through their grasp.

And the infuriating Dr. John Smith _had_, on the day of his escape, the day he'd destroyed their retrieval system and wiped most of their records, mentioned another project.

Thames hadn't paid him much attention at the time. It wasn't like the man had made much sense previously, and, on the day in question, he'd just gotten out of at least a week in isolation. Thames hadn't been _expecting _him to make much sense. Dr. Smith had called them the wrong project, then. And though Thames had questioned him, just in case there _was_ anything to it, Dr. Smith had evaded him. And then he'd gotten away, and they were dealing with that, trying to sort everything out, and Thames had forgotten all about that slip of the good Dr. Smith's, deliberate or otherwise.

Until they had discovered Dr. Samuel Beckett, and _his_ time travel project.

They hadn't realized it immediately. Lothos had been picking up strange fluctuations that they were unable to account for, but they hadn't imagined that anything of this magnitude would turn up. And when it _had_, well, decisions had been made. Quickly. Only, Alia hadn't carried them out. She'd disobeyed, in spite of the consequences. She'd ignored Zoey, and she'd listened to Sam.

She hadn't ever said why, but Thames had some pretty strong suspicions now. Not that he mentioned them. It wouldn't do to mention them. And it wasn't like they could act on those suspicions anyway. Dr. Smith was long gone, and they hadn't managed to find him. Not in the present, and not in the past. Although Thames had thought they'd been fairly close to it, that time that Alia had encountered Dr. Beckett.

If Dr. Smith _had_ known about Dr. Beckett's project, it certainly explained a lot. It explained how he'd known things about their Project that they'd never told him, or how easily he'd adapted to Lothos, or how he'd managed to put everything together so quickly, or how he'd been able to talk as if he were experienced in this sort of thing. It even explained who had sent him. But it didn't explain why.

There weren't a lot of things that irked him, not now, but Dr. Smith's attitude had been one of them. He'd acted like he'd known what was going to happen. He'd acted like he had years more experience than them, as if he were the parent to children who were intent on playing with something they mustn't touch. He'd acted like they were ignorant fools, as if their power were merely imagined. He'd acted like he'd owned the place, as if he'd engineered everything to happen and was pleased, but not surprised, when it played out exactly like he'd expected it to, exactly like it should.

He had never said why he'd come. He'd only taunted them. At best, he'd said that he thought that he could get something out of it, the action of helping them. But he'd never said what. And he hadn't taken anything with him when he left. He could have. He'd accessed Lothos's memory banks, destroying records galore. They didn't know for _certain _that he hadn't taken anything with him, true, but if he had just come for information, he could have gotten it a lot quicker than he had. Besides, Thames had been the last person to see him at the Project, before his escape, and the man certainly hadn't _acted_ like he'd taken anything.

Not that his actions had told anyone much of anything, especially since he'd finally snapped. Though, Thames was hesitant, now, to say that it was as simple as that. It wasn't something he could put his finger on, not really. It just…eluded him. And he hated that. He wanted answers, and he really didn't care how he got them. But the only one who could provide those answers was the elusive Dr. Smith himself.

Seeing as Dr. Smith would probably be shot on the spot if he so much as showed his face anywhere near their Project, it didn't particularly surprise Thames that he'd made sure he'd dropped off the map. It also wouldn't surprise him if he _didn't_ get answers, even if they did run across him again, for that very reason.

He just hoped he got a piece of him before there was nothing left.

"I'll have a better shot at figuring out why Alia leaped in there if you go talk to her," Thames informed Zoey sourly.

"Oh, there's no need to be testy," Zoey replied, her tone slightly scolding. But she wore a slight smile, and Thames knew she was expecting to enjoy herself immensely. "Very well. Tell me what you can about this Grace Holloway, and I'll inform Alia how she is to act." Picking up the handlink, Zoey swept out of the room before Thames could answer.

He started plugging information into the handlink, having made sure that the Imaging Chamber was online and functioning and ready to lock onto Alia. Once Zoey started collecting information, it wouldn't take him long to run it by Lothos, and then they'd have a better idea as to why Alia had leaped where she had. Then, all they had to do was run the course of the leap, as if it were a routine thing, and they'd gain a bit more control over Alia again. Easy.

Or so he'd thought.


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn't easy, trying to track the cracks to their source. For one, they had sprung up all over the place. Yes, he could narrow it down by seeing where they were the most concentrated, but they didn't spread at the same rate, so he couldn't assume that the oldest one was the widest or the longest or any such thing. Which, essentially, meant he was still left guessing.

The good news, however, was that the change was not set. Even if he couldn't seem to keep things permanently fixed, if he could track down the source, he wouldn't _need_ to, because he could stop it before it became any worse. And he had to. Whatever was trying to change, it was degrading the timeline. Not just the splicing job, but the entire timeline, great swaths of it, all at once, weakening, sickening, cracking—_dying_.

Something was most definitely not right, and he needed to find out what that was.

The Doctor wasn't sure how long he had spent at the console of the TARDIS, fiddling with one thing or another, filtering through readings and probing the timestreams for additional data. He'd risked stopping long enough for another quick look at the timeline, assessing the cracks as best he could that way. It didn't seem to help. It just wore him out, draining his precious energy reserves. But he couldn't stop to rest. He didn't have time to do that. If he did, the change might stop fluctuating and begin to set. And he couldn't let that happen, not if it was at all within his power to prevent it.

But pegging it down to a particular time period was difficult enough, let alone a specific date and location.

A dulled ringing brought him back to his senses, and he blinked. He'd gone off for a moment. He must be tired if he'd let that happen. But he didn't tend to rest much these days, anyway. Not when he knew his days were numbered. He didn't want to waste a moment of them. He seemed to have so few left.

It took him a moment to find the source of the sound. It was part of an alarm clock that he'd wired into the console after making some repairs. Donna had been with him, then. Oh, how she'd screeched the first time it had went off! The memory of it brought a smile to his face. But it was short-lived, because she was gone now. She'd stuffed a couple of tissues into the bells of the clock, dulling its ring, and he hadn't had the heart to take them out.

But the clock wasn't something that usually went off, no. Mainly because he usually didn't bother to wait for it. It told him when the TARDIS had finished sorting through the data he had her scrutinizing and screening. Usually, he was right there, ready to turn the alarm off before it set itself off, but there were a few times he'd been too busy to do that, like he had with Donna that first time, and there were a few times when he'd been too, well, caught up in other things, to do that.

He shut the alarm off.

The Doctor frowned when he read the screen. He doubted the TARDIS had gotten it wrong, but…. San Francisco? Again? Surely he wasn't going to die there _twice_, was he, because of some temporal mess?

But perhaps that first— No, it couldn't. 1987, the screen read. September 18. The first temporal catastrophe hadn't happened yet.

Except he knew, from experience, that that didn't really mean anything.

Unfortunately.

Because he had a bad feeling about this whole thing. A _very_ bad feeling.

Something wasn't right.

And he might not be able to fix it.

A bit more subdued than usual, the Doctor programmed the coordinates into the TARDIS and set her on her way.

* * *

><p>This was one of those times, Alia thought, when she would have preferred to have someone other than Zoey as a partner. Zoey didn't mind wandering off topic whenever a particularly delectable specimen of the opposite sex walked by, and Alia couldn't make any scathing retort until they were long gone. She had to bear it all in silence.<p>

She'd been at this long enough, so she ought to be used to it, but sometimes…. Alia shook her head. She just had to bear it through. Zoey was still questioning her, trying to find out what she'd learned about the leapee. Alia didn't bother asking why Zoey hadn't questioned their leapee first. She no longer bothered trying to figure out why Zoey did what she did. If she had a reason, she would never find grounds to tell it to anyone else.

"I think one of the leapee's friends is going to break up with someone, so I did try driving a wedge through that to make sure," Alia answered automatically. "But it didn't seem like it would have lasted anyway."

"Surely you would've found out something else," Zoey prodded, sounding vaguely annoyed.

"Unfortunately, no," Alia replied. "So I would suggest that you get to work in the Holding Chamber."

Before, Zoey would have had her head for daring to make such a comment. But she didn't have as much power now, and Alia knew it. She was also fully aware of the fact that she could still be punished severely for making that comment, but she didn't care any more, not really. It was endless, this game of leaping, and they'd only be doing her a favour if they killed her. She'd be able to escape, then.

But they wouldn't do that. She was too valuable to them.

Besides, if she was a bit cocky, she could retain her sanity.

And if she managed to keep hold of her sanity, she might be able to keep hold of her hope.

It was a false hope, but it was still hope. And it was all she had left.

Ages ago, back when she'd first started leaping—before, really—she'd been offered hope. She'd been a bit different back then. A better puppet, not so bitter—but they still held all the strings, casting her whichever way they wished. But on leaps like this one, where they lost control, just for a second, and something _else_ moved her about—they were the leaps that reminded her to keep hope. If Lothos and Zoey didn't control her, then perhaps she could escape.

Of course, if something else had controlled _them_ all along, then she really didn't have much to hope for anyway. Whatever that was, it was far more powerful than her. She was helpless against it.

Sam had been helpless, too, but he'd had hope. He'd had faith. Oh, how she'd _envied_ him when she'd realized how he leaped. He helped people, every time. He did _good_ things, pushing together things she tried to tear apart. He'd talked about balance, the balance of good and evil. She didn't know how much he was parroting his partner, Al, but it had reminded her of someone else. She'd hesitated because of that, that reminder.

And then she'd made a choice, one she'd never thought, back when she'd first started leaping, that she'd ever be able to make. But she had. She'd let him go. He couldn't save her, but that didn't mean she had to condemn him. There needed to be a balance; there always did. And if she destroyed one side, she'd destroy the other. But that wasn't why, in the end, she'd chosen to save him, even knowing what it would mean for her. She hadn't saved him simply because she wanted to save herself. She'd saved him because he was doing everything she couldn't, because he was helping, making the world better, and because she really did hope that, eventually, he would be able to save her and free her from her trap.

And because he'd given her a choice, a choice that she'd known she'd face for ages. Another doctor had told her about that choice—another time traveller, if she'd pieced things together right, as he'd expected her to. That doctor, Dr. Smith—he'd told her that she'd have a choice to make, a chance to do the right thing, and he'd told her that if she suffered the consequences of that right choice, she'd get another chance for freedom.

He'd been right about Sam. She could only hope that he was right about that, too.

Leaping may have robbed her of many of her memories, but it hadn't been able to take that one away. She'd remembered, just as she'd promised the Doctor that she would. She may not be able to remember him clearly now, his face or his voice, beyond vague impressions of colour or tone, but she remembered his words, and that was enough.

"Thames is working on extracting some more information now," Zoey informed Alia simply. "Lothos will be able to project a scenario soon enough."

Alia just nodded. She could see someone ahead of them, wandering back onto the park path. She didn't want to open her mouth in case the man had good hearing. She wasn't sure how well the sound carried here, and the wind would be blowing her words to him.

"I'll check up on you shortly, Alia, darling," Zoey said. "Ta ta."

Alia kept walking, risking a glance over her shoulder to see whether Zoey had gone or not. Seeing that she had, Alia felt some measure of relief. It hadn't been that long ago that she'd run into Sam, she thought, and now, on her first truly uncontrolled leap since their meeting, she wanted some more time to think about it.

"_Grace_?" the man asked as she walked past, sounding incredulous.

She stopped and looked him up and down, hesitating, wondering how well the leapee knew him.

"No, wait, hold on," he continued, staring at her. "You're not Grace, are you?"

Alia's heart jumped into her throat, and then she realized that the man must have mistaken her for a different Grace. She smiled at him. "I'm _a_ Grace, but not the one you're looking for, I think," she answered politely. She turned to continue on her way.

"You've got Grace, haven't you?" the man asked, calling after her, his voice flat, more a harsh statement of fact than an accusation. "She's gotten caught up in your little experiment."

Alia picked up her pace slightly, not looking back. She found herself wishing that Zoey hadn't left quite so soon. It wasn't like she _couldn't_ take care of herself. She knew enough that she was fairly certain she could lay the man flat within two minutes if she had to. She just didn't want to have to explain away a black eye or some other sort of bruise, or carry a sprained wrist with her into the next leap. She risked that, every time, leaping the way she did, and she didn't want to have to find a way to explain away a seemingly spontaneous injury.

"Alia."

She stopped in her tracks and turned back. "Sam?" she ventured, hardly daring to hope. Had they met again after all? But how had he known it was her?

He shook his head, and her hopes crashed around her. "Don't you remember me, Alia?" he asked. "I mean, I expect it has been a while for you, hasn't it, all that leaping about, but has it really been enough for you to forget me, after you promised you'd remember what I said, if you could?"

She stared at him, taking in his messy brown hair and focussed brown eyes, his long brown coat hanging on a slim frame over a brown pinstriped suit, his—

It couldn't be.

It was 1987.

He hadn't met her yet.

So then…. Alia caught her breath. He really _was_ a time traveller. Not like her, nothing like her—he kept his true form, the same one. He didn't have to borrow anyone else's. And he could control where he went, when, for how long. He didn't have to do anything at all to leave. She'd never trusted herself to truly _believe_ that he could be a time traveller. She hadn't dared. But now, _now_, she had undeniable proof.

"Doctor." It wasn't a question. It just had to be him. She _knew_ it was him. And now that she saw him again, she wondered how she could have forgotten him, the way he spoke, his mannerisms, the aura that surrounded him. Him, the mysterious Dr. Smith.

Except, if it was him, why hadn't Lothos noticed? Zoey may not have, but Lothos ought to have picked up on it, through the handlink. Especially since they were still searching for Sam. Surely the Doctor couldn't travel through time without leaving some sort of trail, too.

"Alia, is this you? Are you doing this?" the Doctor demanded, catching up to her. "Did you lot program this in for a leap? Was this planned?"

Wordlessly, Alia shook her head.

"Oh, no, no, no, no, nonononono!" The Doctor started pulling at his hair, spinning around in a circle, looking at their surroundings. He stopped and faced her again. "Who's leaping you around?"

Alia shrugged. "It's not God. I can say that much."

"So that leaves you with Time, Fate, or Whatever, right?" the Doctor guessed, his forehead creasing. "I'll bet on the _whatever_, myself, with you lot. So then—"

"You've met Sam?" Alia interrupted. "Sam Beckett? Dr. Samuel Beckett?"

The Doctor looked like he'd been about to launch into one explanation or another, but he stopped at the sight of her face. "Yes," he answered. "I met him before I met you. _But_, that's neither here nor there, because Sam doesn't factor into this equation, does he? You've met him once, but you haven't run into him again, have you? You're still waiting, aren't you? And in the midst of your waiting, you're leaping, aren't you, and wronging rights? So what have you leaped in here to do this time, Alia? What are you supposed to change?"

"I don't know," Alia answered. "I haven't been here long enough to find out."

"And it's not a programmed leap," the Doctor continued, "so you're just clutching at straws." He sucked in a breath. "_Brilliant_. Why did it have to be Grace, Alia? Why Grace? Why did you have to leap into Dr. Grace Holloway?"

"I'm sure I don't know," Alia replied steadily. "Why not tell me?"

The Doctor shook his head. "Oh, no. I don't have the answers, not this time. Not like last time. Last time, I knew what had to happen, didn't I? I just needed to let it play out, guiding it along so that it picked the right path. But I'm blind this time, and do you know what? Something's gone wrong. And it's going to _keep_ going wrong unless I can stop it."

"You're like Sam. You fix things."

"To a point," the Doctor allowed. "Alia, listen to me. I'm going to need your help."

"I can't," she said, stepping back. "I really can't. They'd know. I've been through hell, Doctor. Please don't ask me to go back." And before he could stop her, she twisted away and began to run.

* * *

><p>"Zoey," Thames called. "Come look at this."<p>

"I haven't time, Thames," Zoey snapped from the other side of the room. "I've more important things to be doing."

"This is worth it," Thames counted. "I think we've found him."

"Sam Beckett?" For once, surprise coloured Zoey's voice. "Really? Let's see, then." Sounding pleased, she strode over to join Thames from where he was examining the data Lothos had picked up from her time with Alia.

"No, not Beckett," Thames corrected. "Dr. Smith." He pointed to the frozen image caught from the handlink, isolated a distant figure, zoomed in, and focussed. The clarity held for a split second before the figure blurred slightly, becoming a brown smudge, but it was enough. Thames didn't bother trying to sharpen it again; he knew Zoey had seen it. "I wasn't getting any data at first. I had to extrapolate the—"

"Don't bother me with the details," Zoey snapped. "Just tell me this: if you've got a fix on his position there, can you get me a lock?"

"Lothos first recognized it by its absence," Thames explained. "Until I finished reversing everything, we couldn't even get a picture. One frame. That's all I got. One clear image. I can get you to where you left Alia, but you'll have to see if you can find him on your own from there. If you stay with him long enough, we might be able to track the signal back and pinpoint his position in our time."

"Pity we couldn't just kill this one and be done with it," Zoey said, frowning a bit. "I do hate all those technicalities." She straightened up. "Very well. I'll be in the Imaging Chamber. Get me there as quick as you can."

* * *

><p>The Doctor didn't bother chasing Alia down. He didn't need to. She'd come around. Well, even if she didn't on her own, he knew where to find her. And that was enough, for now.<p>

Besides, he wasn't alone anymore. He never used to be able to tell so easily, but he was sensitive to it now. It…hurt, just a bit, if he was honest. But alongside everything else that hurt, this wasn't much of anything at all.

But it was still another reminder that he didn't have long left.

He pulled something out of his pocket and looked at it. He still didn't know what it was. He'd never tracked anyone down who would know to tell him. It was small, but part of something bigger. Like so many other things. But it was also…. It was also a reminder of what had happened, and how his own personal timeline had split into two parts that were later forced together. He'd never expected it to work. He'd been grateful it had, but he still kept waiting for it to fray, to start to split apart again.

It wouldn't really be sealed until he regenerated. Providing he did, of course, but considering that he was still around now, he was fairly certain he would, seeing as his other self had managed to call upon some of that energy and force it back to be used now. He knew, on two different levels, what had been done. He remembered explaining it to himself, and he remembered his determination to make the impossible possible, to find the loophole, and he remembered his own relief as he understood what would be done, and why it ought to work. He remembered what it felt like to break apart, to crack along every possible line, and how painful it was to hold the shards in place, and how much it had _hurt_ to seal it all again.

But he also knew how easily he would splinter again if he didn't get these cracks sealed up—quickly.

Not an easy thing to do when he was being tailed.

At least he'd have a bit of time before they figured out the whole picture. He didn't have much, especially not if Alia told them, but they'd realize soon enough that he was a time traveller. At least, they would if they started to piece together what they already knew. He hadn't been able to clear away all the traces. The official ones, yes. He'd wiped their records, destroyed their data. But he'd had no desire to wipe their memories, even when he'd known what he would potentially face by leaving them be. And while he looked exceptionally good for his age, even he tended to look a bit different after ten years. Especially if he looked at the last ten years of his life. He'd been a different man back then. Those changes, particularly the physical ones, weren't exactly subtle.

The Doctor shoved the object back into his pocket and started on his way, wandering in the opposite direction that Alia had taken. He hoped Zoey would lose interest in him soon, but he couldn't count on that. He was just glad Alia had gotten away before she'd turned up. Still. Even if she was watching him, it didn't mean he couldn't think. Thinking out loud could be a little bit dangerous, but he ought to be able to avoid that.

Unfortunate, really. Sometimes he could work through things so much easier once he'd said it all aloud.

Of course, half the time he did that—saying everything out loud—was because he was explaining it to someone. It always helped when he did that. It really did. He would be explaining something, and suddenly he'd realize what he'd need to do, and then he could do it. Granted, it was sometimes a moment or two before everything fell into place, but it usually worked out. He still had some close calls, of course, but it usually worked.

Not like this, this silent thinking. He knew now what could happen if he was left with only his own thoughts for too long. Too many memories. Too many viewpoints, really, each one just slightly different, conflicting with another but still all in agreement, and yet not one of those had made him _stop_. And they should have, each and every one of them, and now he was faced with disapproving silence, too, from the consciences that he had deliberately ignored.

He wouldn't be able to forgive himself, even if he _did_ miraculously manage to stop the timeline from cracking.

The Doctor sighed. He felt _old_. It seemed as if he'd seen so much, lived so long—it wasn't that he was _tired_, exactly. He hardly had reason to be if he was; even if he had seen well over the nine hundred years he admitted to, more than enough to give Methuselah a run for his money, he was going through his regenerations rather quickly for a Time Lord. And another was coming, soon. It just…. He was lonely, and he didn't exactly look to be at an age where he could sit and chat with a stranger about any of this. He didn't expect understanding. He just wanted…. Connection, he supposed. To know that he was not the only one with those thoughts in his head.

Any self-respecting Time Lord would say he'd spent far too much of his time with humans, and that they were a bad influence on him.

But…. There were humans out there who, like him, knew that their days were numbered. Not for the same reason, but with the same knowledge and everything that came with that knowledge. A desire to live the last days as fully as possible, since every moment seems so much more precious, so treasured, because it's another moment that could slip away forever without being appreciated. Even for him, where he could _relive_ that moment, it wouldn't be the same. For him, it was still different, more like another moment lived than the same moment lived again.

But it was also…. He'd been through it so many times, but he was still afraid. He ought to survive it, but there was always that chance that…that he wouldn't. That it would be too sudden, too quick, or that something would go wrong, or— Well, no, not _or_. Because he wouldn't suppress it, not now. He wouldn't _choose_ death, not yet. There were still too many things to do, even if he was a different man when he was doing them.

Providing he would still _want_ to do them.

That was the real fear, not knowing who he'd become. He'd be himself, but at the same time, he could be so _different_. That's one reason it still felt like death, even if it was survival.

Among the other things he could stand to learn, there was acceptance.

Fine line, though, with acceptance. There were some people who said that they'd accepted things when really they'd just given in, not troubling themselves to fight. Take Alia, for instance. She'd _accepted_ her position as a hapless leaper, a helpless destroyer. For the most part. She was too afraid to fight it, or rather of the consequences of doing that, to help him. She'd given in.

But not, he hoped, to the extent that she wouldn't be able to get away with Sam.

Granted, if he couldn't convince her to help him now, she'd never have the chance. The timeline probably wouldn't last that long.

With his luck, especially his luck lately, it wouldn't be long until Zoey and everyone else at the Evil Leaper Project realized what he was, putting things together as Alia had done, only with different pieces.

He'd worry about that when it came to it. Now, he'd be better off trying to lose Zoey, plan things out himself, try to get Alia alone, and go from there. He couldn't _see_ where Zoey was, exactly, and he wasn't about to try, because that could very well make it easier for Lothos to pinpoint him, and he wasn't about to make anything easier for them unless he had to. As it was, he could just sense where Zoey was, the general direction, with a vague impression of how closely she was following him.

Thing was, he had to lose her without her getting suspicious.

The Doctor glanced around him again, partially to get a better idea of where Zoey was, and partially to take in the surroundings. He grinned when he saw a way out. Bolting would have been too obvious, even if it probably would have done the trick since she would have a fair bit of trouble following him if he dodged into the trees and she lost sight of him, meaning she couldn't just pop herself ahead. But he recalled Zoey's character, and he was quite certain that she'd find reason to go elsewhere if he made things incredibly dull for her.

She wasn't, as far as he knew, the type of person who particularly liked chess.

He rather doubted if she even knew how to play it, given how well practiced she was at her other little games.

So, all _he_ had to do was go up and introduce himself to the two men playing up ahead, watch for a spell, and try his hand against the winner. He knew how to drag games out. More fun that way, really, than just winning in a few brilliant moves. But he was fairly confident that, no matter how good a player he was up against, he could stay in the game long enough to bore Zoey to tears.

There was the risk that she would try to stick around and learn his strategy, or to see if he started chatting, but he resolved that he would keep his mouth shut and stare at the board for as long as necessary, until she was gone. And then when she was, well—then he could enjoy himself.

Just briefly.

Before everything started to happen too quickly.

Besides, it would give him a chance to think, with a surface distraction so he didn't dwell too much on past or future.

And maybe it would be a step towards acceptance of the inevitable future he feared, even when he was going to be doing everything he could to save it.

* * *

><p>AN: Just a quick thanks to those who take the time to review, and if anyone's wondering why I said Zoey likely doesn't like chess, for all I portray her as a bit of a strategist and a game lover, well, she doesn't like playing by other people's rules, either.


	3. Chapter 3

Zoey quickly lost interest in Dr. Smith. According to Thames, the proximity wasn't helping them pinpoint where he was in their time, and she wasn't about to stand around watching the man entertain himself when he wasn't even making any small talk or giving her anything useful to work with. She'd seen enough to know, without a doubt, that he was the man who would, in his future, turn up at the Project, but she wasn't even getting any indication from him about the sort of things he was up to _now_, and if they couldn't find out about his history….

It was infuriating.

Lothos could uncover _anything_, no matter how well hidden it was.

Except, it seemed, for information about Dr. Smith.

He was a worthy opponent; she appreciated that. He'd beaten her once, but he wouldn't get the better of her again. She didn't know much about him, but she had learned some things in the time he'd spent at their little experiment, helping them complete it successfully before sabotaging it. She'd have a better chance at besting him if they faced each other again.

She would enjoy it so much more when that time came now that she had a better measure of the man.

He wouldn't be able to trick her again so easily.

It didn't matter that she wasn't sure where he was now, in her own time. She knew they would find him. It might take time, but she was prepared to wait for it. She had patience for _that_. She knew the reward she'd get.

It would be _such_ a glorious reunion.

Zoey's lips curled into a smile. She'd have Alia keep track of this earlier Dr. Smith, so they could learn more about the one they had met. He knew a great deal about their Project. If he found out that his own future could be in danger, he might be willing to come out of the woodwork to confront them.

He would, given his previously demonstrated expertise on the subject, know that they could not _directly_ harm his past self for fear of affecting their own future, but they could still bargain. And perhaps, if they spent enough time with his younger self, they would learn what would be an excellent bargaining chip to hold. After that, there was the simple matter of attaining whatever that may be, and he would come to them. They wouldn't even have to play this waiting game.

And once he wandered into their little trap, he wouldn't be able to escape again. No matter how careful he was. They were prepared for the time that he came back, even if they weren't quite sure when that would be.

Two brilliant scientists, two doctors, had each escaped their grasp once. When they got a hold of either one of them again, they could settle the score. The time would come for both of them, Zoey knew, but now she was so close that she could taste victory. Dr. Samuel Beckett would get his due when they encountered him again, but in the meantime, she could enjoy her little game of trapping Dr. John Smith.

* * *

><p>Thames had the privilege of being the first person to look in on the leapee. He'd seen all manner of them over the years. This one was rather disappointing. No sobbing, no screaming, no hysterics whatsoever. She just sat there, curled up in the middle of the table, as far away from the straps as she could get, hugging her legs to her chest and resting her head on her knees. The only thing that moved when he entered was her eyes, which flicked towards him the moment he entered.<p>

"Having fun, sweetheart?" Thames asked lightly, walking over to her. She didn't answer him, so he continued, "Cat got your tongue, Grace?"

She flinched away from him then, even though he hadn't made a move toward her. "How do you know my name?" she demanded softly.

"Oh, I know quite a lot about you, Grace," Thames said. He smiled. He knew how much it unnerved the leapees to start off like this. It had taken him ages to figure out a program on Lothos to extract the information and relay it through the chip they'd implanted in Alia, but it had been worth it. They weren't dependent on the leapees for those first few crucial moments of the leaps anymore. All they needed them for now was a bit of additional information, supplementary things to determine precisely why Alia had leaped in—providing they hadn't been the ones to put her there, though that didn't happen very often anymore, even if they did have some measure of control. Being able to guide her leaps might mean they could keep Alia in certain types of assignments, but being able to send her to a specific place and time of their choosing was becoming rarer than ever, though not quite as rare as this was, this leaping off the map and completely blindsiding them.

Still, it was more control than that Dr. Beckett had over his leaps, if Thames was interpreting things correctly. That meant they were still ahead of him, that their Project was more advanced. And as long as they had the upper hand when it came to the technology, they'd be able to find Sam Beckett again, and, with any luck, Alia would be able to get the job done.

Zoey had, as far as he knew, talked Lothos into letting her have a second chance if the opportunity ever arose.

Thames wasn't sure how much of that was to save her own skin, but it wasn't his business. He was supposed to find out more about this Grace Holloway who sat in front of him, cowering beneath Alia's aura.

"Where am I? How did I get here?" Grace asked, unable to keep the fear from creeping into her voice. She hadn't lost control, not yet, but it shouldn't be long. He should know; he'd had enough practice telling.

"That's not how it works," Thames said. "I ask the questions, not you."

"Well, I won't answer your questions if you won't answer mine."

Defiance. How pitiful. She'd probably try bargaining with him next. "You might want to take another look around, sweetheart. You're not going to like the consequences of keeping silent."

And there it was, finally, the fear breaking through, the realization that this wasn't just a dream, the realization that she wouldn't wake up when things took a turn for the worst. He liked it when he got to see that moment. It was so entertaining to see what they tried next, those ones who had lasted their first brief spell of imprisonment in silence. Begging, bargaining, bartering, beseeching him to stop, wait, hold on for just a minute more—and when he didn't, because he never did, the screams started.

And it was no different this time.

* * *

><p>"You wouldn't happen to know," the Doctor started after he managed to beat his opponent—Fredrick Conner, a <em>very<em> good player, even better than Ralph Littington, whom he'd first played and had nearly given him a run for his money— "what this is, would you?" He pulled the object he'd nicked from the Edwards' barn out of his pocket and held it up.

It was a piece of something, he was fairly sure. He just wasn't sure of what. It was a small, cylindrical thing which fit easily in his hand. There was a round disk near the top, skewered down the middle by a pointy bit. Well, to loosely describe it. Not that he found it necessary to _really_ describe it when they could see it.

Fred frowned at it and picked it up out of his hand. "Where'd you find this?" he asked, turning it over.

"Oh, I just picked it up," the Doctor said. "It's just one of those things. You know how they build up, all the odds and sods, bits and bobs…."

"And where'd you pick it up from, an old barn or a scrap yard?" Ralph asked. "That looks like an oiler."

Fred looked thoughtful. "Probably for a stationary engine of some sort." He handed it back. "I've seen them in better shape."

"Oh, is that all?" the Doctor asked. "I thought there might be a better story to it than that. Pity, really. I could have used a good story." He pocketed it again. "But, now, I have to say, this _has_ been fun. I haven't enjoyed myself this much in, ooh, I don't know if I can quite remember when."

"Well, I think we both had a good time ourselves," Fred said, smiling. "Ralph and I have been playing here every Friday, weather providing, for nearly twenty years, and this is the first time we've ever had someone as good as yourself challenge us."

The Doctor grinned. "Oh, well, you know what they say about practice." He stood up. "It was good to meet you two, really. And it's good to know what I've been carrying around. Might find a use for it someday. But I'm afraid that I'd best be off now. Things to do, you know. Can't avoid it forever." He kept his tone light-hearted, but the truth of his words weighed on him. Because that's precisely what he was trying to do—avoid something. And he knew he couldn't. Everything he did just brought him a step closer to the end.

But he was managing to find distractions. Like this. And things like this happened to be very good distractions, because he was fairly certain he wouldn't like the outcome of failing to be sufficiently distracted by this. If he didn't sort this out— Well. It…wouldn't be good. Granted, once a few of the big cracks split, it wouldn't be very long until everything else went downhill. Too many things would be happening at once, and he wouldn't be able to control it.

Cracking.

He'd _known_ it was a possibility. He just…hadn't thought he'd ever have to deal with it on this scale.

Or that he'd be trying to patch something that refused to seal.

He knew what was causing that now, of course. Alia. She'd leaped into _Grace_, of all people. He didn't know what she was supposed to change, and he wasn't sure if she even knew yet, but whatever it was wasn't just putting Grace Holloway in jeopardy. It had the potential to destroy everything. Not just to change history, but to actually tear it apart, taking present and future with it.

If Alia _managed_ to change Grace Holloway's future, things could play out differently for him. All right, so Grace had been the one to kill him with her so-called exploratory surgery and her anaesthetic after he'd been shot, and any other doctor could have done that, too, cardiologist or not, if they'd insisted on poking around his body when they didn't understand it in a futile attempt to help him, despite all his insistencies to stop. But not every other doctor out there would have done what Grace had done—helping him and believing him and turning back time and holding back death with him. And if that didn't happen like it should—

It wasn't that he thought the Master would have actually managed to succeed, in so many words. He had been in a spot then, yes, and Grace had helped him out of it, but he was fairly confident that he would have managed to come up with something to get him out of the situation, or stop it from becoming any worse. Somehow.

Well, all right, he probably _wouldn't_ have managed it, but that didn't mean that there wasn't any way that he wouldn't have been able to, potentially, sort things out afterwards.

Of course, the fact that things were cracking so quickly was a fairly strong indication that the odds would have been against him.

Still. If he could prevent Alia from changing things, he could stop the cracking, and he wouldn't ever have to worry about what might have been or could still yet be.

Granted, that would be much more difficult if she continued to ignore him, insisting that she couldn't help. He was sure she'd come around in time. But, even if he couldn't convince her not to do whatever she'd leaped in to do, perhaps he could tweak things so that she leaped out of Grace and into someone else. A sideways leap. That was possible, he knew. Sam had done it once. The consequences of the change may not be so great, then, and he'd be able to contain it all and fix things up.

Unfortunately, that would mean he wouldn't be able to continue along unnoticed anymore. Well, more unnoticed than this. Because, as far as he knew, his…_acquaintances_ from the so-called Evil Leaper Project just thought he was his past self. Alia might be able to keep a secret from them, and she might not, but he wouldn't be able to do what he needed to with her without saying something that would, most definitely, tip them off.

He wasn't very keen on the idea of letting them know more about him, but he didn't seem to have a choice. Besides, it wouldn't be telling them much. If they'd been clever, they would have already worked it out. Alia had. He'd dropped her a few more hints, true, but the others could have pieced things together if they'd really tried. Well, and if they hadn't been so preoccupied with fixing things up after he'd destroyed a bit of key circuitry.

The Doctor sighed. However things turned out, he could be certain of one thing. Sealing all the cracks wouldn't exactly be a walk in the park.

* * *

><p>Alia didn't know where she was headed. She didn't know where the leapee lived. That was the trouble with leaping into someone when the person wasn't at home and when Zoey didn't feel bothered to give her a real address. Not that she really expected one, seeing as this was a leap that they hadn't planned. Not that they could really plan any of her leaps anymore, but this would be the sort of situation where they couldn't just pull her out and thrust her somewhere else. It was the sort of situation where she <em>had<em> to do something to leap.

Somehow, she didn't think it would be particularly easy to do that with the Doctor around trying to fix it.

She'd nearly managed it with Sam, yes, and probably could have if she'd really tried, if she'd really wanted to. But the Doctor wasn't Swiss-cheesed; he had all his wits about him. More than that, he didn't seem to share the same desperate hope that she and Sam shared, the desire to go home. If he did, he hid it, so well that even she couldn't see it, though perhaps that was because she hadn't spent enough time with him. But he could control where he went, so it was perfectly reasonable to assume that he could also go home, wherever and whenever his home was.

When she thought about it, she really didn't know much about him, and she was strangely certain that that wasn't just because she couldn't remember what she had once known.

What had he wanted, back when he'd come to the Project? If he'd met Sam by then, and Sam had met her, then that would be how he found out about them. But she'd never told Sam their location, or much of anything at all. He'd been all too happy to do the talking, and Zoey had kept telling her to keep her mouth shut, especially once it had been decided that she was to—

But she hadn't, and she'd faced the consequences of that.

The first choice.

That had to be what the Doctor had meant.

So maybe the second choice was as simple, too—just as obvious. She'd meet Sam again, sometime, and be offered the chance to escape.

Providing Zoey didn't try to have her try to kill him first. It was so difficult to keep secrets from them. She'd managed it before, but…. It wasn't like they wouldn't know. All manner of things had begun going wrong, changing where they shouldn't, when Sam had leaped in. That would happen again.

Of course, by all counts, it ought to be happening now, given the Doctor's presence.

She wondered if Zoey had seen him.

She wondered if they knew.

She hadn't known for certain until she'd spoken with the Doctor and he'd recognized her for who she was.

Come to that, though, she didn't know how he'd managed that. He evidently knew the leapee in the future, yes. He'd called her Dr. Grace Holloway, after all. But had he known it was her solely on her habits, her responses? If he knew Sam, he knew that she wasn't the only one leaping. She didn't know if there was anyone else besides the two of them. The Doctor had said that their technology didn't work with more than one leaper, or wouldn't work very well, at any rate, and she'd never worked out whether or not that had been a lie.

No, it couldn't have just been how she'd reacted, because she hadn't even opened her mouth before he'd realized that she wasn't Grace Holloway. All he'd done was look at her.

Stripping away the aura she hid behind.

Looking deeper, inside.

Searching her soul.

Alia shivered, trying to tell herself that it didn't matter. But that was a lie, and she knew it. She was fairly certain she'd had the impression that the Doctor had known more than he was telling before, too. She didn't know who he really was, and clearly no one at the Project did, either. Not even Lothos.

She could vaguely recall some of Zoey's earlier mutterings. The closest they'd come to discovering a bit more about Doctor John Smith was through some report dating back to 1969. 1987 wasn't such a great leap from 1999—or whatever year it really was in her present, since she'd lost track—but 1969 was. So was—

Alia cursed her memory. Hadn't there been another time? Perhaps not; maybe she _was_ just recalling the Doctor from his time at the Project, back before she'd become the first leaper. Or their first leaper, at any rate. She didn't know when Sam had started, but she hadn't needed to ask to know that Sam had been at it for years, too. As for the Doctor…. When had _he_ started? After them, surely, given the improvement of the technology, but then how could he go back to 1969? If his present was even twenty years after hers, he had to be outside of his own lifetime, given his age, and that wasn't possible.

No matter. She couldn't go asking him. That would be too risky. She hadn't reported her suspicions about the Doctor to Zoey, and she didn't want to risk them finding out that she knew something and hadn't told them.

Some secrets she could keep.

Alia stopped walking, then moved off to one side of the path to dig in Grace's backpack. Just because she was keeping secrets didn't mean she had to stop using common sense. Grace would be bound to be carrying around something that contained her home address, even if it was just something that she'd written inside a book or her bag in case she ever lost it. She'd leaped into a city, not a rural area; mailing address and home address were probably the same.

A bit of rummaging later, Alia determined that Grace Holloway was living in residence. That was fine by her; easier to find that way, and she'd been in enough dorms to know her way around them blindfolded. Roommates usually proved to be a bit troublesome, until she determined precisely how well the leapee got along with them, but that didn't normally didn't take her long to figure out. Besides, if she ever got it wrong, there was a ready explanation at hand: it was a bad day, and things weren't going too well, and she was sorry, but sometimes things could be so frustrating—

It had always worked so far, the few times she'd misjudged. She'd gotten sympathy and understanding and forgiveness and a few encouraging words, and she'd pretend to be grateful, and then she went to destroy whatever she was meant to ruin.

It was funny, how some relationships were meant to be broken and how some had to be preserved.

She didn't understand how everything was connected. She knew they were, all these little threads that she could see that bound people and places and events together, creating history. She recognized what she had to tear apart. She just didn't understand why, or how a change now created an echo that was strong enough to affect things years later.

She lived history in the present, but she wasn't learning from it. It was a great opportunity, yes. Sam was probably ecstatic to have it. She'd loved the idea of it, too, at first. The promise of it, the allure, had drawn her to the Project and trapped her there. But then she'd actually begun leaping, and she'd seen the harshness of her reality as it was. She'd tried to ignore it before. She'd pretended it was something else. But she couldn't fool herself forever, and now she was so used to seeing it that it didn't bother her anymore.

Not on the surface, anyway.

Alia took a moment to get her bearings, then adjusted her course and headed for the university. It was something she'd done dozens of times. She couldn't keep track of precisely how many lives she'd ruined when her targets were just trying to get on their feet and establish their own lives. Far more than she liked, really, but she didn't have a choice. She never had a choice, not anymore. Sam had been the only one to ever offer her a choice since she'd started leaping.

Well, the only one to offer her a _real_ choice, anyway. The Doctor's plea for help wasn't a choice. It wasn't the sort of thing that would matter. He didn't really _need_ her help, which was just as well, because she wasn't at liberty to give it to him. She was bound by chains that she didn't understand well enough to escape, and he had been clever enough to put her in them, so he ought to be clever enough to clean up after her if she ended up doing something he didn't really like because of that.

She'd been happy to leap, that first time. She remembered it so well, that happiness, even if she couldn't recall much else. She hadn't properly felt it since, since even her joy of discovering Sam had been soured by Zoey's reminders of what she was there to do. She'd thought that leap, whether it worked or not, would be an escape, a long-awaited chance for freedom.

It hadn't been.

She was still the marionette, acting out whatever she was made to do, with no real control over what she did or where she went or who she was.

She'd learned long ago that life wasn't fair. She knew that better than most people. It wasn't a complaint; it was a statement, a fact. The Doctor had asked her who was leaping her around, and the truth of it was that she didn't know. Not God, like she'd said. She didn't think there was much argument against that. God wouldn't have set her and Sam against each other; that didn't make sense. Sam didn't know how he leaped, either, but God was a far safer bet with him than with her.

But as long as she didn't know who was leaping her around, she didn't know whose pawn she was, who held all the strings and made her dance. She didn't know where the programmed leaps had come from, or what sent her off on unexpected assignments like this. She didn't know whether to be thankful or properly terrified.

She didn't understand.

That had been another thing the Doctor had said so long ago. She recalled that now. He'd said that she didn't properly understand time, that none of them did, that not a single person at the Project really knew what they were getting into.

She had a strong suspicion that he did.

Especially now that she had undeniable proof that he was a time traveller as well.

It didn't matter. She was ignorant, and he was not. That's what it boiled down to. So she couldn't help him even if she wanted to. She didn't have anything to offer. Besides, she'd leaped in to do something. To destroy something. He was trying to fix something. They couldn't work together; it wouldn't work.

"Sorry, Doctor," Alia murmured as she went on her way. "You're on your own."

* * *

><p>AN: Alia's a tad more afraid of everyone at the Project than she is at the Doctor, of course, so the Doctor's going to have a fair task ahead of him convincing her to trust him enough to defy them. And, of course, many thanks to anyone who takes the time to review.


	4. Chapter 4

Alia had barely made it back to campus before Zoey turned up again. "Alia, darling," she said, "you'll never guess what Thames found."

Alia took a slow breath. She hated these games. "What am I supposed to do?" she asked.

"We're still working on the details," Zoey acknowledged.

Alia shut her eyes briefly. She almost actually pitied the leapee; she would rather be stuck in a cycle of leaping and destroying than have Zoey trying to work out all the details. Thames wasn't quite so bad; he was too eager, and didn't draw it out as much. He lacked Zoey's expertise, her finesse. At least, he had back before she'd left. Then again, it had been years, she thought, since she'd gone. Perhaps he had changed, gained a bit of Zoey's dreaded skill.

"Then what did he find out, if it's not what I'm here to do?"

"It's what he _found_, not found _out_, Alia. Do keep it straight. Those little slips can be costly." Zoey paused. "What he found was someone we've spent quite a lot of time looking for."

"You mean who he found, then," Alia corrected. Zoey paid her no mind, so she continued, "Was it Sam, then?"

"Not yet," Zoey replied. She looked critically at Alia for a moment. "Do you mean to tell me that you didn't see him?"

"See who?" Alia responded automatically.

"Dr. Smith."

So they had found him.

Alia tried to calculate the appropriate reaction without taking too much time to arrive at that conclusion. "Dr. Smith?" she repeated hesitantly. "You don't mean the man who—?"

"Oh, quite," Zoey confirmed. "Didn't you see him?"

"I don't really remember what he looks like," Alia confessed. It had been true, at least.

Zoey's lip curled. "No, I don't suppose you would, would you? Shame. He hasn't changed a bit in all this time. He was even wearing the same suit he'd worn when he came to visit us." She proceeded to describe him, adding, "Think, Alia. Did you see that man?"

Alia glanced around the campus, hoping she looked like she was waiting for someone rather than talking to herself. "I passed him in the park," she admitted.

"Did he say anything to you? Did he notice you?"

Some secrets she could keep, but they knew so much. Hoping her words wouldn't destroy whatever the Doctor was trying to do, she answered, "He called me Grace when I passed. He must know the leapee."

"So you talked to him?"

"Not for long. I left as quickly as I could. I couldn't figure out how he knew Grace or how I was supposed to respond."

"What did he say, Alia?"

Alia bit her lip, then asked, "How is that even going to help? He's not the same person yet, is he?"

"But he'll _lead_ us to him," Zoey pointed out. "So what—?"

"I told him I was busy," Alia answered. "In a hurry. Couldn't talk." Zoey gave her a look, so Alia added, "He said he'd try to catch me later." That was true enough, she was sure; she somehow doubted that the Doctor would give up on her so easily.

"Listen to me, Alia. You let him talk when he turns up again. Find out as much as you can. We need as much information as we can get so Lothos can get a lock on him."

Alia just nodded, not sure how this was going to turn out. Then, "I need to know what I'm supposed to do here."

"We're working on it, darling. Just be patient."

"I don't want to miss my opportunity," Alia shot back. She nearly had, once. She'd nearly been trapped. She was not about to have that happen again.

"You won't," was the short reply.

Alia pursed her lips but didn't argue. "What have you learned?"

"That our Grace Holloway can take things in stride," Zoey replied, "but she's no different than anyone else in the end. She tells us a few things between her whimpers, when she isn't begging us to stop. The man you spoke with before was Andrew Milton. Same year, also wanting to specialize in cardiology. Grace tells us she thinks he might have a thing for her, Alia dear, so do keep that in mind in future interactions. The other two were Marie Angleton and Brian Collins, also in the same year. Marie plans on being a paediatrician. Brian's just going to be your run-of-the-mill general practitioner, from the sounds of it."

"And is he?" Alia asked, knowing Zoey would have checked their records.

Zoey laughed. "Heavens, no. Seems he can't stomach it. He ends up as a high school science teacher in some city in Connecticut, covering biology and physics."

"Andrew told me Brian was top of his class," Alia said, surprised. "And he dropped out?"

"Yes. Even without your help, it seems." Zoey consulted the handlink for a moment. "We don't have enough information to know anything for certain, but Lothos suspects it may have something to do with this Andrew."

"Am I supposed to build him up before the fall?" Alia asked.

"We're working on it," Zoey reminded her, and Alia knew from her tone that she shouldn't push it any further.

"Tell me when you get more information," Alia said dully. "I'll find out what I can from here."

"From what we know," Zoey said, "Andrew should be in the library now. Grace says he's awfully fond of revising. Keeps a schedule."

"Doesn't surprise me," Alia muttered, but she nodded and shifted the weight of the bag on her shoulder. "Which way is it? I'd better meet him there."

"Should be," Zoey answered after consulting the handlink, "that building on your far right. The tall one." She looked distracted for a moment, then added, "Thames just told me Grace says you're to go to the fourth floor."

Lovely. Someone was still with the poor leapee. She wondered who it was; Thames and Zoey were the only ones she had dealt with on a regular basis. Even when she had been at the Project, she hadn't known much. They didn't want anyone to know too much there. There had been other leapers like her, yes. Well, other potential leapers. The ones before her hadn't made it. She didn't know what became of the ones after she'd begun leaping, the first time the experiment had been successful. They would have been expendable.

Expendable.

She'd been relieved that _she_ hadn't become expendable. Before. Now, she'd almost welcome it, if it weren't for the vague promise of a future escape.

She had to wonder if that promise was something that would ever come to fruition, or if she was just clinging to a false hope.

"I'd better get to work, then," Alia said. "Tell me the minute Lothos comes up with a prediction."

"I'll check in on you later, darling," Zoey informed her, hitting the right combination on the handlink to open the door to the Imaging Chamber. She stepped through, and a minute later she was gone.

Alia let out a slow breath. This was not going to be easy. She didn't think she could keep up this sort of charade for very long. They could still monitor her with that link, that chip in her head that acted as a neural relay. As long as she was in her right mind, with the same pattern of brainwaves, the link would remain strong.

She didn't see how she'd ever be able to escape the Project with it functioning.

It didn't matter now. What did matter was getting to the library to meet Andrew Milton and, hopefully, to find out what she'd leaped in to do. Then, she could do it and she could leap out again, and the Doctor would be able to fix up whatever he needed to, and then that was that. The only ones who'd be worse for the wear would be those directly affected by whatever her assignment turned out to be this time. From the sounds of it, that would probably be Andrew Milton.

"Sorry," Alia mumbled as she started off to the library, "but it's not my call."

It never was.

* * *

><p>Andrew Milton himself was pleasantly surprised when he saw Grace making her way towards him. He wasn't really sure what had gotten into her earlier, when she'd run out on him, but he was sure she had a good reason for it, even if she didn't choose to share it. The fact that she had turned up now, at their unofficial scheduled study time, made him feel better. Whatever it was wasn't so dire that it kept her from routine, at least, so it couldn't be too bad. If it had been, she wouldn't have come. She had a clear set of priorities and was the sort of person who had no qualms in making others quite aware of which ones were at the top of the list, whether they agreed with her or not.<p>

That's not to say that Grace didn't have her oddities. Eccentric tendencies, she'd say. He teased her about them routinely, as she did with him about his. It was more mutual acceptance of their own ignorance and acknowledgement of their different opinions than anything else. She liked the classics. He'd rather science fiction. She'd listen to opera while he stuck with rock-and-roll. But he absolutely loved playing chess and would play a game of that any day before he'd be caught dead playing on a sports team, and Grace just refused to even attempt to learn the game and instead kept joking that he ought to join one team or another. The last one she'd said was bowling, in response to his claim that he'd taken too many balls to the head to enjoy any sport that involved one.

He had to admit that that was one ball with which, fortunately, his head hadn't become acquainted, and while the likelihood of such an occurrence was low, he didn't want to tempt fate.

She'd just laughed.

But she wasn't laughing now, Andrew noted, and she didn't look like she would be for a while. Whatever had caused her to run earlier clearly had left its impression. "Anything wrong?" he asked as she sank into the chair across the table from him.

"Bad day," Grace answered.

"Anything I can do to cheer you up?"

"Probably not," was Grace's glum reply.

"What's the trouble?"

Grace smirked. "Don't worry about."

All right; she didn't want to tell him. He could respect that. Casting around for something more to say, but unable to find it, Andrew turned back to the material in front of him. "What did you want to start with? Anatomy?"

Andrew didn't see Grace's face blanch. "I just have a lot of things on my mind," Grace started. "And…." She stopped, uncertain, before continuing with, "I just recently ran into someone I met years ago. I nearly didn't remember him. I didn't, at first, but he knew me, and…."

"Trouble?" Andrew guessed. He wasn't usually that good at this sort of thing, but that didn't mean he couldn't try.

Grace hesitated, then shook her head. "No. Not like that. He was…a friend of sorts. It's just that there are some other people I know who are looking for him, and I don't think it's in his best interest to be found."

Andrew blinked; he hadn't expected that Grace had ever kept _that_ sort of company. "It probably would be better for him to be found now rather than later," he pointed out after a moment. "The consequences wouldn't be so great."

Grace gave him a confused look, and then she laughed. "It's not like that," she said. "He's not a criminal or anything, not to my knowledge. He just didn't leave under the best circumstances, the last time he ran into the others."

"Fight?"

"I'm not precisely sure," Grace admitted, "but I doubt it. He never struck me as that sort of person. His weapons are his words, not his fists."

Probably an intellectual, maybe an extremist of one sort or another getting some flack for his opinions. "Sounds to me like it's not really your problem," Andrew said. "I wouldn't get involved if I were you."

Grace just shook her head. "Too late for that. I'm the middleman, whether I like it or not."

"Then don't take a side."

"That's easier said than done," Grace told him. "He's trying to get me to help him, and heaven forbid they ever find out that I even heard him out, because they want me to…." She trailed off. "It's complicated. I'm not even entirely sure what's going on myself."

"We'll start with something easy, then, to keep you focussed," Andrew suggested. He flipped through his textbook, found something he thought appropriate, and looked back up at Grace. "Name the bones of the hand."

She just stared at him, and shook her head.

"You knew them yesterday," he chided.

"That was yesterday," she said, rather stiffly. "Look, I don't really want to do this right now. Do you mind if we just walk?"

She did look a bit restless, likely agitated about recent events, and the walk probably would do her good. He wasn't going to refuse her when she needed a friend. She might open up some more, too. "Sure," he agreed, packing his textbooks back up. "Let's go."

Grace smiled at him. "Thanks," she said, looking more than a bit relieved.

He'd expected that she'd say something more once they were out of the library, but she didn't. She just set a quick walking pace, and he followed suit, easily keeping up with her. She avoided the major groups of buildings, opting instead to head in a haphazard route across campus with no apparent destination in mind.

"Are you going anywhere in particular?" he finally asked.

"I'm going somewhere I hope I can think," she answered.

"Library too quiet?"

It was a moment before Grace answered. Then she just said, "No."

"Well, it wasn't too noisy, was it?"

"No," she said again. "No, it wasn't like that."

"So what was it like, then?"

Grace didn't answer for a moment, still looking distracted by her thoughts. "No," she said again. She glanced at him, just briefly, before returning her gaze ahead and saying, "That man I was talking about earlier—he calls himself Dr. John Smith. When I ran into him, he recognized me, and I didn't expect that." She looked to her other side, then down again, and mumbled, "He saw right through me. He saw me for who I really am. It…shocked me."

"That's what's bothering you?"

Grace winced. She was quiet for a minute or so, and then she snapped, with uncalled for anger, "I didn't know what it meant."

Andrew's steps faltered, not knowing why she'd used that tone with him. "Sorry," he said, though he wasn't entirely sure what he was apologizing for. "I didn't mean to pry."

Grace frowned. "No. It's not that." She sounded annoyed, but he still hoped he could count that as an accepted apology. "I just thought it was a mistake. I didn't pay attention to it."

"And you should have?" Andrew guessed, even though he still wasn't really sure what she was going on about.

"Apparently." Another pause, then, "Look, I'm sorry, all right?"

Andrew managed to give her a smile. "It's okay," he said. "You just had a bad day, and it threw you off your game. It could happen to anyone."

"If they're unlucky," Grace muttered.

"Just take a couple of deep breaths and you'll feel better," Andrew advised. "It'll calm you down, and then you'll be able to think straight. No matter how loud or how quiet it is."

Grace stopped then, saying, "Oh, that would be great," in a sarcastic voice—another thing he didn't think was necessary. But after a few more seconds past, she did seem to breathe easier and she even took his advice. He kept silent, not wanting to be on the receiving end of her sharp tongue, and after a moment she smiled at him. "Thanks," she said, sounding as if she meant it. "That really did help, I think."

She wasn't acting like herself.

He'd thought that she'd be able to pull herself together, that her showing up at the library was her way of saying that she was back to normal again. But she wasn't, not at all. He'd never seen her like this. It wasn't just that she was extra-sensitive to things around this time of month, more prone to emotional mood swings given the relative proportion of hormones in her body. It was as if she'd flicked a switch and turned her predictable, loveable, eccentric personality off.

He wasn't precisely sure what to make of this one.

He was being silly, of course. But however he looked at it, Grace _was_ acting odd. She may have told him some things, but it didn't really make sense to him. He didn't understand her troubles, and he didn't know how he could help her with them unless he did. "Maybe you should just tell me everything again," he suggested. "From the beginning."

"I can't," Grace said. "I don't remember it all."

"So tell me what you do remember."

Grace sighed. "Don't bother, Andrew. You can't help me, so just forget it."

"You didn't seem to mind telling me earlier," Andrew reminded her, feeling slightly hurt.

Grace glared at him. "That was earlier, okay? This is now. And, now that I've had time to think about it, this is pointless. You can't help me."

Andrew couldn't find words for a second or two. "But…." He shook his head. "Grace, what's gotten into you?"

Grace opened her mouth to answer—or perhaps to snap another retort at him, if he was to judge by her mood—but a distant shout cut her off. She turned her head in the general direction as if she'd recognized the voice, or the name that had been called, and she cursed. "I don't need this right now," she muttered.

Andrew looked again at the figure that was approaching them. "You know who that is?"

"That's the Doctor," she said, her tone still surly. "He must've found me. I thought he'd spend his time looking through the crowds…." She frowned. "I've got to go."

"The Doctor?" Andrew repeated. "You mean Dr. Smith?"

"Unfortunately," Grace confirmed. "Look, he's…different. You can't really trust what he says, so don't listen to him. He doesn't make sense half the time anyway."

"But, Grace—"

"Later," she called, taking off at a run.

Andrew stared after her, wondering if he should follow, but before he had the chance, Dr. Smith had caught up to him. "Where's she off to?" he asked, nodding in Grace's direction.

"I don't know," Andrew admitted. "Look, how exactly do you know her?"

"Oh, that's a bit of a complicated tale, and now's not the time for it," Dr. Smith said. He studied Andrew for a moment. "And who might you be? I'm the Doctor, by the way."

"Yeah, Grace told me. Dr. Smith."

"Well, it's actually just the Doctor," the Doctor corrected. "But you are?"

"Andrew Milton," he replied slowly.

The Doctor looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head. "Never heard of you. Sorry."

"I wouldn't have expected you to," Andrew said, thinking that perhaps Grace was right about the man being odd after all, even if she couldn't seem to make up her mind about other things. "But Grace told me about you, and—"

"Did she?" the Doctor asked, looking surprised. "I don't expect it was the whole truth if she did. Not that she really knows the whole truth, but that's probably for the best." He paused for a moment. "Was she acting a bit odd?"

Andrew frowned. "If you're the reason for—"

"Oh, not the entire reason, no, not by any means," the Doctor interrupted. "But, look, Andrew, isn't it? She's not herself. Whatever she says, whatever she does, ignore it. She doesn't really mean it. She won't until she's back to normal, all right? You can't trust her, not now. It is very, very important that you don't do anything or keep from doing anything based on Grace, all right? Not within the next few days. No matter what she tries to make you think."

Andrew stared at him for a moment. "Who _are_ you?" he asked. The man's accent betrayed him as British, but he couldn't really distinguish anything else. He couldn't even say for certain whether or not the man was actually a physician or just someone else who held a doctorate.

The Doctor, who had been staring after Grace again, turned back to look at him. "I'm a friend."

"Whose friend?"

Grace was gone now, but the Doctor still nodded in her direction. "Hers, I thought, however you look at it. But I am, most definitely, a friend of Grace Holloway's, even if she doesn't properly realize that yet. But she won't for a while, I suppose."

"What?"

The Doctor didn't answer him. Instead, he just started muttering to himself. "They've probably figured out what she's here to do by now. She's started, at any rate. Trying to pry everything apart…."

It was a moment before he acknowledged Andrew again, and then the Doctor asked, "What did she say to you?"

"About what?"

"Everything. I need to know what she said. She might've let something slip, and if she did, I can figure out what she's trying to do and then I can stop her."

"But why do you want to stop her?" Andrew asked. "Grace isn't doing anything wrong. She prides herself on being careful and learning everything and—"

"I never said anything against Grace," the Doctor interrupted. He stopped, frowning. "I probably shouldn't be doing this," he said at length. "I really shouldn't. But I don't think you'll help me unless I do."

"Unless you do what?" Andrew asked. He shook his head. "I don't know what's going on. I don't know who you are or why you're so interested in Grace. If you want me to help you with anything, you'd better explain yourself first.'

The Doctor sighed. "I had a feeling you'd say that."

"So are you going to tell me what's going on?"

The Doctor tugged on his ear. "I already did, in a way. Sort of. But I think you've guessed anyhow."

"What?" Andrew just looked at him, wondering why he even bothered to stick around. "Look, do you know why Grace is acting that way or not?"

"Yes," the Doctor answered, "and, as I've said, you've probably guessed it yourself. That Grace Holloway—" and here he pointed in the direction in which Grace had gone off "—is not herself."

"So you've said," Andrew cut in. "But that doesn't explain anything."

"Her name's Alia," the Doctor said.

It was a moment before Andrew stopped denying what he figured the Doctor was trying to say. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"That's not Grace," the Doctor repeated. "That's Alia. She's a time traveller. A leaper, she calls it. She's come back here to do something, and I think it might involve you."

"What?"

"Alia leaped here to do something," the Doctor continued, "and whatever it is, it's not good. I have to stop her, but to do that, I need to know what she's trying to change."

"You're insane," Andrew said.

The Doctor looked offended for a moment. "And that's how Grace acts, then, is it? Look, if she's been overly friendly lately, or angry, or distant, or something out of the ordinary, something not in character, you have to ignore that. It's Alia, not Grace. She's probably trying to get you to do something, or to stop you from doing something, and it'll affect your life _and_ Grace's, and I'm not about to let that happen."

Andrew studied the Doctor's face for a moment before saying, "You don't look like you're joking."

"Because I'm not," the Doctor told him.

"But even if I was going to pretend this was true, how the heck do you fit in?"

The Doctor sighed. "Dr. Grace Holloway is a very good friend of mine," he said, "and I don't want to see Alia destroy her life." There was a very brief pause. "Besides, whatever Alia's trying to do, it has effects that that little project of hers hasn't anticipated. Things could get very bad, very quickly, and I, for one, am not about to let that happen. Now, I don't know who you are, Andrew Milton, or who you'll become, and I'm beginning to wonder if I should, because frankly, if you're involved in this, you ought to be someone." Another pause, this one shorter than the last. "Then again, Alia's leaping never really was enough to raise any major flags. I daresay she hasn't had, or won't have, very many more notable run-ins than Sam has, which is really the only reason their entire balancing act works without disrupting the larger histories. So perhaps you aren't important after all."

"Thanks," Andrew said sarcastically.

"No, no," the Doctor said quickly. "That's brilliant, really. It means that your future's not set, not like Grace's. You can be whatever you want."

"What do you mean, I can be whatever I want? Of course I can! It's a free country."

"No, you still don't understand me," the Doctor said. "You don't have to study whatever you're studying, not for things to keep. You're not like Grace. Grace _has_ to become a cardiologist. She has to be one of the best. But you…you don't matter, not like that. You've got more freedom. Your timeline's more flexible."

Describing the Doctor as 'different' didn't cut it, as far as Andrew was concerned. Grace was right that the Doctor didn't talk sense, but he sounded like he was off his rocker. Like he'd gone completely round the bend. He may have offered an explanation for Grace's strange behaviour, but it wasn't a good one. He hadn't even said where Grace was, if she wasn't here.

Andrew wondered for a moment if he should even bother asking, but in the end decided he might as well. "Where's Grace, then?"

"Roughly twelve years into your future," the Doctor replied grimly.

"So she's okay? She's safe?"

The Doctor looked at Andrew then, and it was a look he'd remember for years. There was sadness, and anger, and pain—so much pain, and grief, and guilt, that it all told Andrew that the Doctor had seen more than he had ever cared to see in all his years. And then the Doctor closed his eyes and gave a small shake of his head, still looking far more weary than he ought to. All he offered Andrew in reply was a simple, quiet, "No."


	5. Chapter 5

"What do you mean, _no_?" Andrew demanded.

The Doctor took another deep breath. "I mean, I sincerely doubt that Grace is perfectly fine." It wasn't something he particularly wanted to admit, but perhaps if he told the truth, Grace's friend would be more inclined to trust him. And it _was_ true. Well, as far as he knew. He didn't particularly expect that the Evil Leaper Project had changed their ways since he'd last paid them a visit.

He wasn't sure how long it had been for them. He knew they'd run into Sam once, but that didn't tell him anything. That little run-in had occurred in 1966, after all. That put it at about 1999 for Sam—he'd been there right before that leap, after all, so he ought to know—and he knew the Evil Leaper Project ought to be around the same time, given when they'd started, which why was he'd told Andrew twelve years ahead, but he wasn't sure whether it was earlier or later than that for them. He wouldn't be off by much—a couple years either way. Alia had been leaping for a few years now, he figured. Her manner told him that much.

Trouble was, he still didn't know much. Yes, the fact that Alia had been with this Andrew bloke told him that he was probably involved with whatever she had to do. He just didn't have any idea what that might be, or why it would cause the timeline to crack. It shouldn't. Andrew Milton wasn't anyone he knew, so he wasn't important, which meant he wasn't causing this. It was the fact that Grace Holloway was the leapee that was throwing everything for a loop. But even that didn't make perfect sense; the leapees, once returned to their own time, didn't tend to suffer any adverse effects of Alia's leaps. She always leaped into them because they were close to the problem that she was going to create. Theoretically, once Alia did whatever she had to do and she leaped on and Grace was returned, everything ought to be fine. Except, of course, for the trouble Alia had caused, but that alone wouldn't cause the cracks.

Thing is, if the timeline was cracking, then this leap was different from the others. Not just the fact that it wasn't controlled—though he _really_, _really_ would like to know who was trying to control them, or controlling this one, at any rate—but rather in the effect it had. Whatever it was, Alia's change would have a lasting effect on Grace, altering _her_ future, too.

And, unfortunately, altering her future could potentially mean altering _his_ past.

Which was probably why he was dealing with so many cracks that refused to fill. If he actually did _die_, or if the Master succeeded in his evil plan despite his best efforts to the contrary, or even if he'd never needed to regenerate and had faced all his past problems with a different attitude, finding sufficient but different solutions—

Not good.

Andrew was still asking questions. The Doctor rocked back and forth on his heels for a moment, wondering just how much he should tell the man. He probably shouldn't have told him anything, but it was too late for that. Alia would probably make one claim or another that it meant that she wouldn't be able to leap—well, assuming she'd come to the same conclusion that Sam had—but that really wasn't true. It was just an imposed limitation. It did make sense; they were more likely to be _successful_ if they were undetected. But he didn't really want Alia to be successful, so perhaps it didn't matter that he'd already opened his mouth.

Still. More explanations to be made, at any rate. Or rather, clarifications. "Look," the Doctor said slowly, "Grace is caught in a nightmare. When she comes back, that's all it will have been for her. She won't remember the time she was gone, and she won't know a lot about the time Alia's spending here, though she'll gain enough partial memories to get by and think that _she_ was the one doing whatever Alia did all along. That's how it works for them, usually. But while Alia is here, you can be assured that Grace is alive." He hesitated, then added, "But, I've seen the Project where she's being kept, so I can't guarantee that she's exactly what you would call _well_ at the moment. Like I said, I rather imagine that she isn't, because that's how they are, these people. I've spent some time there as an honoured guest, so I ought to know."

Andrew blinked at him, and then he did something the Doctor was grateful for: he made a connection that saved the Doctor many more lengthy explanations. "Are you trying to tell me that you're a time traveller, too, if you've been wherever they've got Grace?"

"Yes, exactly," the Doctor agreed. "Good lad. Now, are you going to help me stop them and get Grace back?"

"But…time travel's not possible!"

Then again, humans did cling to their preconceptions rather tightly. "Well, maybe not now," the Doctor said, though that wasn't precisely true, "but the thing about time travel is that something from the future can find its way into the past, and that's what's happened here. Alia's not from 1987. Well, not this version of her, at any rate. And her Project's not around at this time, either. But that Project is there in your future, right around the year 2000, and they're reaching back to this time, your present."

He was rewarded with another blank stare.

"Do you think you could just believe me for a few days and go along with me?" the Doctor asked. "Then, when this is all over, you can pretend that I _am_ the madman you clearly think I am, and I'll drop out of your life again and it'll all be fine, nothing more than a story. Is that all right with you?"

"But this is—"

"Do you want me to put it another way?" the Doctor interrupted. "All right. This is 1987, correct? Have you seen _Back to the Future_?"

After a few seconds, Andrew nodded.

"Good," the Doctor said. "Now, in 1985, Doc Brown built a time machine, yes? And it ended up in 1955, but that doesn't make it 1955 technology, does it? Even though time travel wasn't possible in 1955, it was still affected because time travel was made possible in 1985." The Doctor paused, then said, "Alia's from 1999, or thereabouts, and now she's in 1987, just like Marty McFly went from 1985 to 1955. Except Alia doesn't exactly have a time machine, which is why she had to displace Grace, but the minute Alia leaps into another time, she'll leap into someone else, and Grace will return here. Do you follow me now?"

"But this isn't science fiction," Andrew protested weakly.

The Doctor closed his eyes briefly. "No," he agreed. "Right now, it's more science _fact_. So are you going to accept it and help me, or am I on my own?"

"I'll help you," Andrew said after a moment's silence. "I don't want Grace to be hurt."

The Doctor grinned. "That's the spirit! Now, what can you tell me about how Grace—or rather, Alia—has been acting lately?"

* * *

><p>Grace woke up suddenly, frightened into consciousness by a dream she could no longer remember. It was a moment before she could move, but that moment was long enough to tell her that she really hadn't escaped the real nightmare. It was pitch black when she opened her eyes, but she could feel the cold metal of the table beneath her and the tight straps that bound her wrists. Her feet were free this time. They hadn't been last time she'd woken.<p>

She could guess by the darkness that she was alone, and she rather hoped the darkness would last—not forever, but for a long time. She'd learned what the light brought. Light meant questioning, endless questioning, and questioning meant pain.

She wished that she knew what they wanted. By now, she figured she'd tell them almost anything if it meant that they would let her go. But from the things that they were asking, she got the impression that even they didn't know what they were looking for.

She couldn't find much rhyme nor reason to their questioning, if there was any to be had at all. The first time they'd asked about her and her life, who she was and how she acted and what sort of routine she kept. Then, they'd asked about her friends, and the people she was with, describing people or giving names and demanding descriptions. They wanted to know about her life as if they were trying to replace her, but that couldn't be. If that _were_ their intention, however they intended to go about it, they'd never be successful, not when they didn't ask her what her dreams were.

She was building her life on her dreams, and she wasn't about to stop just because she'd run into a nightmare.

She didn't think they'd ever ask about her dreams, but if they did, she wasn't sure she'd tell them. Not everything. Her dreams were her own, and hers alone. It was something this nightmare couldn't take away, and she wasn't about to offer her dreams up to tempt fate.

Her dreams defined her, who she was and who she would be, in the future. She'd realized that a long time ago, when she'd deliberately chosen her path to follow her dreams. She didn't regret that. She knew she was doing what so many people wanted to do but so few actually did, and she was rather proud of that. She'd only be happier once she managed to finally accomplish her dreams.

But the trouble was that she wasn't sure if she would be able to, now. She didn't know how she'd gotten here, or even where she was, let alone why she'd been brought here. She didn't know what it meant. She'd dreamed of many things, but never something like this.

She wasn't sure how long she'd been kept in here. Sometimes it only felt like hours, but other times it seemed as if days had passed. Time had no meaning here. There was darkness or there was light, but she wasn't able to discern any logic in the pattern, if one actually existed. That's not to say she hadn't tried. In the darkness, when she was alone, she had plenty of time to think. It was the only time she could think. If she was alone when the lights were bright, glaring down at her, she knew they would be coming, and she couldn't think. She was too frightened to think straight, wondering what would be coming next, whether she'd have the answers to their inevitable questions, and how long the questioning itself would last, before she was returned to the darkness.

She couldn't help but wonder how long they would let that illusion of comfort last, before they turned it on its head and taught her to fear the darkness instead of welcome it.

Grace tried to ignore the twisting feeling in her gut. She thought that if she could distance herself from this, she'd be able to bear it longer. She tried assessing her reactions, trying to mentally step back and observe, and then naming off what was causing them, which hormones were coursing through her veins, what they did and how they acted and which glands they originated from. She named off their chemical structures and how the reactions were regulated. She moved on to related reactions, enzymes, reaction intermediates, anything she could, branching outward, jumping from topic to topic in a systemic way, trying to recall everything she could.

It nearly, but not quite, made her forget where she was.

"I'll get out of here," Grace whispered to herself. "I will. I don't know how, but I will. Somehow." She took a few deep, steadying breaths, trying to keep from sobbing. She wanted to be brave, but it was hard to when she didn't know what she was up against—or if the nightmare that threatened her dreams would ever end.

* * *

><p>Alia didn't run far. She planned to face the Doctor soon enough, but she wasn't ready yet. He'd invariably ask what her assignment was, and she hadn't invented a suitable lie to tell him. Zoey had only told her not ten minutes ago. It involved Andrew Milton, as she'd suspected, if only because she'd been near him when she'd leaped in. There was a critical exam coming up, probably the one for which Andrew and Grace kept revising, though she'd been getting the impression that he was trying to keep up in all his classes. Lothos predicted that if Andrew failed it, he wouldn't become a cardiologist. Quite aside from the fact that numerous people would potentially fail to receive the treatment and care they needed, if his failure was a result of <em>her<em>, for whatever reason, he would become embittered and withdrawn. If she could push him far enough, he might just go further to find an escape than simply dropping out.

That was the ideal situation, although she was getting the impression that a failure to reach that ideal would be acceptable, just this once, because they also wanted her to get as much information as she could about Dr. Smith.

She had to wonder how they'd view the situation once they realized the truth. Or what they'd say when she told them, as she was sure she'd eventually find herself doing.

She couldn't keep secrets from everyone, even if she tried. She'd managed to keep a few things to herself over the years, withholding things from them by never mentioning them and rarely allowing herself the luxury of thinking about them. That was the reason she had known the Doctor's secret and they had yet to discover it. But he seemed to be able to read her like an open book, and she wasn't so sure that she could keep something from him as easily, especially when she knew he was going to ask her a direct question and probably had a few ideas about what her answer would be already.

She was usually so good at keeping secrets, but she wasn't sure if she could keep them when it really mattered—or what the consequences of that failure would be. She couldn't imagine Zoey's reaction when she found out about the Doctor, the fact that he not only knew Sam Beckett but also that he was a time traveller himself. But she really didn't have any idea of how the Doctor would react when he found out her actual assignment, although she imagined that he wouldn't particularly like it.

He fixed things, like Sam, and he'd come here to fix something, too. She didn't really know what that was. Presumably, if he'd come to fix it, it was something that had already gone wrong, something separate from her leap. But he'd asked for her help, and she wasn't sure why he'd bother if it wasn't related to her leap.

He knew the leapee, though. Grace Holloway. Dr. Grace Holloway, he'd said, so he knew her in the future. Perhaps he had intended to seek her out to help him. But, no, that wouldn't make sense. He acted too careful and cautious to deliberately interact with her before she'd originally met him, and if he'd been a part of the leapee's life at this point, they would've been able to discover that. And he hadn't seemed to be looking for her, anyway; that they'd passed in the park was an unfortunate coincidence.

Perhaps he was more like Sam than he knew to admit, and she was trying to destroy the very thing he was trying to make sure succeeded after all.

It was as if he expected she'd leaped in to destroy Grace Holloway's life, wiping away her future. That wasn't the case. Lothos said there was an 87.4 percent chance that she was here to make sure Andrew Milton didn't pass that exam, and frankly she'd done more horrible things on worse odds, so the Doctor's concern, if that was what he was worried about, was unnecessary.

Zoey was right. She'd have to talk to him, whether or not she was prepared. She doubted she'd get the answers the Project wanted, but she definitely needed some answers from him if she was going to figure out what was going on. She had a feeling that if she didn't work it out, she wouldn't manage to leap out of here, whether or not she was successful. There had been times before when she'd expected to leap and she hadn't. Things hadn't been quite finished then.

She'd probably have to see this through to the end, too, wherever that end happened to be.

She'd tell the Doctor the truth. Just…not the whole truth, in its entirety, in case he _was_ there to stop her. She'd assure him that she wasn't here to destroy Grace's life, and admit that she was there for Andrew, but that Lothos wasn't entirely sure why. That was true enough, after all—Lothos had only predicted why she was there. He wasn't entirely certain, not a hundred percent. It wouldn't be lying to say that, and if she had any luck at all, the Doctor would take her statement as it was, and make an incorrect assumption, thinking she didn't know, either.

Alia took a deep breath. She'd spent time enough away, and she'd sorted things out. She could face the Doctor now, and all his inevitable questions. She had enough of her own for him, as far as questions went. Perhaps they would both get the answers they so dearly wanted.

And perhaps, since Zoey had just been here, she might be too preoccupied to turn up in the middle of it and spoil things. Alia had no doubt that the people at the Project would find out, either through her or on their own, but it would be better if they didn't find out quite yet. The Doctor wouldn't think he had enough time to answer her questions if he knew they were on to him, and she certainly had questions. Both from now and the first time, all those ones he'd never answered, though the fact that he'd run into Sam before he'd come to their Project explained a lot.

Not to mention the fact that he clearly had personal experience with time travel himself.

But she had many more questions about that. If he could control it, he ought to be able to help her escape this, and if he wouldn't, she wanted to know why, and he'd better have a good reason for it, for leaving her here, trapped, leaping through time—and for starting her off on it in the first place.

He'd said he'd known what had happened and just had to be sure that it played out as it ought to, that first time. That didn't make sense. She leaped through time to change things. She always changed what originally happened, making things worse as Sam made them better. If the Doctor meant to preserve things, as his statement implied, then he should never have helped to get her leaping in the first place. He couldn't be preserving history by making sure she changed it. That just didn't make sense.

Then again, not a lot about the Doctor did make sense, but she suspected that was because she—and everyone else back at the Project—knew so little about him.

No matter. She'd deal with that in time. Right now, she needed to find him. If she was right and he was looking for her, that wouldn't take very long. He, clearly, seemed to know precisely where to find her, even when she tried to lose him.

That would be another thing to ask, when she had the time.

Well, if she had the time. She hadn't had the time last time, and the Doctor had run out on her before she could ask all her questions. She had little doubt that he would do so again if given the opportunity. But she would try to find the time, and that was the best she could do. And if she didn't get answers, well…. She'd be disappointed, yes, but she wouldn't be surprised.

She was used to having all the questions and none of the answers.

* * *

><p>Thames was not happy to have to admit to Zoey that he hadn't found anything more about Dr. Smith when she asked. "Alia has to give us more to go on," he insisted. "And it's not like Lothos hasn't managed to project a reason for Alia's leap. She'll be out of there soon enough."<p>

"I don't care if she _doesn't_ get out of there," Zoey snapped, "if it means we get Dr. Smith."

"Look," Thames said, trying to be reasonable but knowing even as he did so that Zoey was not one to see any reason but her own, "I want to get my hands on him as much as you do, but I'm running everything I can think of to track down Dr. Smith in relation to the leapee. Patient records, academia, even all the family and friend connections I can trace. But we haven't found anything yet. It's possible that Dr. Smith already managed to wipe the records. He has with practically everything else. We can't assume that we'll get a lucky break and that he's just overlooked this."

"Has Alia come in contact with him yet?"

Thames knew what Zoey wanted, and he checked the information they got from Alia's relay chip. He shook his head. "No. But she may not be able to find him."

"He's supposed to find her, not the other way around," Zoey pointed out stiffly. "I don't want him to get away again, Thames."

Thames understood Zoey's anger—he felt the same fury, the same humiliation, as a result of Dr. Smith's earlier actions, that Zoey did. "He won't," Thames said. "We'll get him."

Zoey smiled tightly. "Yes, we will, won't we?" she mused. "We have something he wants—Grace Holloway. Pity we haven't any way of telling him. I would hate for him to miss this opportunity to speak with an old friend."

"He might still be monitoring us," Thames admitted after a while. "We still don't know exactly what he did to Lothos, or the rest of our systems. He could've put something in to collect data from us. We never found anything, but—"

"But we have no guarantee that you managed to check everything and weren't fooled by anything else he managed to put in," Zoey interrupted, her voice cold again. She knew as well as Thames that Dr. Smith had shown surprising brilliance when it came to Lothos and everything connected to him. They'd been quite happy with how quickly he had caught on—until he'd turned the tables on them and managed to escape.

Thames still wasn't entirely sure how Dr. Smith had managed that, especially seeing as he couldn't have been thinking clearly after his time in isolation—something even more apparent by the last conversation he'd had with the man. But however much nonsense he'd spouted, there had been some sense to it, though Thames hadn't realized that until much later, not until after Alia had run into Dr. Samuel Beckett.

Trouble was, he hadn't gotten any further pursuing that lead to Dr. Smith than he had pursing the one regarding Grace Holloway, at least not so far. They'd turned up some things on Dr. Beckett, but nothing about his secret project, and not enough information to get a lock on anyone related to find out more information about them. Thames had a feeling they could thank Dr. Smith for that, and he suspected Zoey thought the same, though neither mentioned it.

"Turn the lights on in the Holding Chamber," Zoey finally ordered, clearly accepting that neither Thames nor Lothos had any more information for her. "I'm going to see if our leapee can tell us anything about Dr. Smith before I check in on Alia again."

Thames did as she asked, and then turned back to study the results—or, in too many cases, the patterns formed by the lack thereof—he had in front of him. He suspected they'd find something about Dr. Smith soon enough. They'd spent too much of their time searching, and covered too much ground, to continue to come up with nothing. No one was that careful. Everyone slipped once in a while, making a mistake here and there or forgetting to cover up one trace or another. All he had to do was find it.


	6. Chapter 6

Alia wasn't very surprised when she ran into the Doctor shortly after she'd gathered her thoughts, but she was surprised to see that he was with Andrew Milton.

She also didn't really like the way Andrew was staring at her, but she smiled at him anyway. "I think I've sorted things out now," she said, still not acknowledging the Doctor and keeping her gaze on Andrew. "I'm sorry about earlier. I wasn't thinking straight."

Andrew shot a rather nervous glance at the Doctor, and then tried to smile back at her. "That's all right," he said. "You weren't…yourself."

It was only years of practice of keeping her true emotions off her face that allowed Alia to hide her shock. He knew. He _knew_. How was she supposed to leap out of here if he knew? She couldn't do what she'd leaped in to do if he knew. She wouldn't be successful. He'd be wary, watching for it. She'd be stuck unless she could convince him that she was indeed Grace Holloway.

Alia smiled again, but she feared it was a rather tight one. "It's been a long day, that's all. Meeting old acquaintances unexpectedly." She turned to the Doctor then, adding, "I hope you haven't been filling Andrew's head with stories."

"I wouldn't call them stories, exactly," the Doctor replied. She could find no trace of the grin she remembered seeing so often on his face.

That settled it, then. The Doctor had told Andrew. She just needed to find out how much. She should never have run. She could have stopped him if she hadn't, counteracted it, contradicted him, turned his words on him. Now it was too late, and she had to do her best to either discredit the Doctor or lower Andrew's guard.

Not an easy thing to do when she'd already lost any trust he might have given her, seeing as he'd be bound to believe the Doctor after her double-sided conversation with both him and Zoey. Those words alone would have been enough to make him wonder, even more so after her earlier actions, but now that he was offered an excuse, she knew better than to hope he'd reject it on the basis that it was impossible. He hadn't exactly struck her as someone who would do that. She'd met many who would, in a heartbeat, but from the brief time she'd spent with Andrew, she was fairly sure he wouldn't.

One more strike against her.

"And what would you call them, then?" Alia asked lightly.

"You don't need to keep playing these games, Alia," the Doctor said. "As I'm sure you've guessed by now, I let Andrew in on your little secret."

Alia had been watching Andrew's face and didn't miss the flicker of doubt that crossed it. She creased her brow with confusion, asking, "Alia? Dr. Smith, I'm afraid—"

"And that," the Doctor interrupted, "is not the last mistake you're going to make, Alia, if you try to fool me. Grace hasn't met me yet. She doesn't know who I am. But, I'll thank you for confirming that you _are _Alia, because I think Andrew here might've had some doubts about what I said and you just cleared all that up. Now, he's agreed to help me sort things out. Will you?"

Alia cursed under her breath. Completing her assignment this time was _really_ not going to be easy.

But perhaps she could begin by gaining Andrew's trust on her own, before she betrayed it.

She didn't see any other option.

Alia pasted a rueful smile on her face and turned back to Andrew and held out her hand. "As you've been told, I'm Alia," she said, introducing herself, "and I'm sorry for deceiving you."

It was a moment before Andrew shook her hand. "Andrew," he said, a bit awkwardly, perhaps because he was clearly aware that she already knew his name and had known it long before the Doctor had told him hers. "Where's Grace? The real Grace?"

"She's fine," Alia answered. "Don't worry. She'll be back the second I'm gone, I promise."

Andrew looked at the Doctor, who was failing miserably in his pretence of ignoring their conversation but persisting at it anyway, giving them time to sort things out between themselves. "That's not what he told me."

"Grace will be back soon," Alia repeated. "It'll be fine."

"But she's not, is she?" Andrew asked, looking back at Alia, and she didn't need to be as good a reader of facial expressions as she was to see that his concern was genuine. "She's not fine, wherever she is, is she?"

Alia closed her eyes, wondering exactly how much the Doctor had said. When she opened them, she simply told the truth, if not the truth in its entirety. "I can't be certain. I'm here, not there. I haven't been there in years. I've been leaping for ages now. Leaping—that's what we call it, this jumping from time to time. And…." She hesitated for a moment, but decided to continue anyway. She needed for him to trust her, and this was the best way she could get his trust. "I don't remember much," she admitted. "I've got these holes in my memory, like my brain's just a hunk of Swiss cheese. It's not very reliable anymore."

"But do you think Grace is all right?"

"I don't know," Alia repeated. She didn't want to answer the question. She knew Andrew wouldn't like the answer. Having him know the truth about that particular matter wouldn't help the situation.

Andrew looked like he, rightfully, suspected the worse, but took her at her word. That was a good sign—it was a small show of trust. He probably knew she'd been honest with him just then, if only because the Doctor had told him something about her leaping and its effects. And if he was any good at reading people himself, he'd know that she just didn't want to give him an affirmative answer, but she didn't mind if he knew that. Withholding that information wouldn't make him want to mistrust her, exactly, because of the nature of the situation. If he had been able to help Grace based on what she told him, it would have been different. Since he couldn't, he would probably perceive her reluctance to tell him the truth as a sign that she cared—about his feelings, about the situation they were in, and whatever else—and that was good enough for her.

"What did the Doctor want help with?" Alia asked, hoping that if she turned the questioning away from Grace's wellbeing, Andrew might come around more quickly.

"I don't know," Andrew answered. "He didn't really say. I mean, he was asking about you before, but he never said what he wanted your help with. Or mine, now that you're back and he can just ask you all his questions."

Alia looked at the Doctor, expecting him to answer, but he was still staring off into space in the other direction, hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth slightly on his heels while he waited, pointedly ignoring them.

No matter. She had a fairly good idea why he'd been asking after her. If Andrew was observant and could tell the Doctor what he needed to know, the Doctor would be perceptive enough to have pieced together a fairly good guess as to what her assignment was this time. Fortunately, she knew that she had never said anything to Zoey specifically about the assignment, mainly because Andrew had still been with her at the time, so he couldn't know the specifics. She still had a chance of pulling this off, then, as long as he didn't know.

He'd stop her if he knew, she figured, even if he had been the one to start it all in the first place.

Alia sighed. "I can't help him unless I know what he wants. I'll be busy enough trying to figure out what I'm here to do."

She saw the Doctor spin on his heels at her words, his eyes searching her face for evidence of her lie. She ignored him in favour of Andrew, who had said, "I thought he said you already knew why you were here."

"Not entirely," Alia answered. "That's my trouble, that not knowing. I can't be a hundred percent sure."

"You never are," the Doctor said, finally joining their conversation. "Alia, you have to tell me what you know."

"I don't know anything that's of any use," she replied.

"Let me be the judge of that."

Alia frowned at him, but looked back at Andrew, saying, "Can you give us a moment?"

He nodded, then checked his watch. Twice. "We've got class in five minutes!" he exclaimed. "It's halfway across campus. Grace, we need—"

"Go," Alia said, not bothering to correct him. "Take notes for me. I won't be able to make it." She wondered if she should be encouraging him to skip as well, given what she needed to do, but she had to speak with the Doctor alone. She was ready for the conversation now, and it wasn't in either of their best interests to delay it.

Andrew hesitated for a moment, but finally nodded and took off at a run, leaving Alia alone with the Doctor.

The Doctor was the first person to speak. "What are you supposed to do to him?" He nodded at Andrew's retreating figure.

"Just the routine sort of thing," Alia answered, realizing that the Doctor knew without a doubt that she'd been fibbing earlier. She had to pick her battles carefully, and this wasn't one she would be able to win.

"Alia," the Doctor said gently, "please. Zoey's not here, so you can tell me the truth."

Alia blinked at him, too shocked to answer at the moment. "How do you know Zoey's not here?"

The Doctor pulled a face. "Eh…. It's a bit of a side effect, really, of something that happened to me not too long ago. It happened at the same time I met you, really, in one sense, but then again it was also a few years before I experienced it all anyway."

It took Alia a moment to sort that out. "You weren't in your own time when you came to the Project, were you? You'd leaped back to the past, like you did now."

"I don't travel the same way you do," the Doctor cautioned, "but, yes. That's partially right. Now's not the time for the entire story, though, so suffice to say, after that little experience of mine, I've become a bit more…sensitive to these sorts of things. If Zoey's near enough to me, I ought to be able to tell when she's about. But that's not important. I need the truth, Alia. What's your assignment? Why are you here?"

Alia pursed her lips, but decided not to pursue things just now. "Like I said, I don't know for certain."

The Doctor eyed her critically, then asked, "And how certain are you?"

Of course he'd know Lothos gave his predictions in percentages, given that he'd helped with some of that, and that he knew Sam. "Fairly," she admitted.

"And?" the Doctor prompted.

She was picking her battles, for better or for worse. Zoey wouldn't be pleased that she'd decided to concede this one, but that couldn't be helped. "He's to fail an upcoming test."

The Doctor frowned. "And what else?"

"He'll drop out," Alia added, "and, possibly, develop a severe case of depression and decide to drop out of more than just university."

The Doctor's expression hardened, but all he asked was, "This is routine? You've done this before?"

"I've tried. Sometimes I'm successful."

The Doctor closed his eyes, as if he were feeling ill. After a moment, he opened them again and said, "There has to be something else."

"That's all I know," Alia told him.

"Then you're missing something," the Doctor said. He started pacing around her, muttering to himself. Alia waited, and finally he stopped and faced her again. "Losing a friend's bound to be hard on Grace. What's the effect on her future? There has to be some effect on her future."

Alia shrugged. "That's not why I'm here, so it's not my problem."

"It is," the Doctor countered. "It's _everyone's_ problem. Alia, you can't do this. You can't control the effects." She crossed her arms, and he continued, "There are cracks, Alia, because this is not meant to happen. Cracks in _time_."

"So there are cracks," Alia said. "Fine. Doesn't affect me. I won't be able to tell the difference."

"Of _course_ it's going to affect you—that's the point. No one's going to be safe from them, no matter when or where they are. Don't you understand? These cracks are _bad_. Very, very, _very_ bad."

"So they're bad," she said. "I'm used to _bad_, Doctor, or have you forgotten that already?"

The Doctor frowned at her. "There are two main reasons you get cracks," he said simply, starting the inevitable explanation. "One, you get two very different periods pushed up against one another, but those are usually more noticeable because they can cause wrinkles in the skin of the universe, which in itself leads to more cracks. And that's…not good, so you'd better pray you never see one of those. But, B, you get what is starting to happen here—one period of time pulling apart. Granted, those used to be called chasms, those cracks. Because they don't simply stay as cracks for very long. They can't; it would require them to last as one-dimensional lines, spanning—" He broke off. "No matter. Thing is, when they start to pull apart, gaining not just length and width but also depth, reality starts to crumble. You'll get aftershocks in various periods, so the destruction isn't isolated, which not only makes it harder to contain and control, but also a good deal more difficult to stop, because things are falling apart at different times, each in turn affecting another time, and another, and another, falling down and echoing back and reverberating and crashing and colliding into other times."

Alia just waited, looking evenly at him, knowing he wasn't finished. The Doctor took a breath and then continued, more slowly, "All you're doing, Alia, is driving a wedge into a crack, forcing it apart. You're starting it all, the first in a long and elaborate and, frankly, very convoluted line of dominoes."

"I can't stop what I'm doing, Doctor," Alia said. "I'm sorry, but I can't."

He'd probably said those five words many, many times, judging by the look on his face when she'd said them to him, but evidently he wouldn't accept them now. "You _have_ to, Alia," he insisted.

"I can't," she repeated. "If I don't, I won't leap. I'll never get out of here. I'm not like Sam, Doctor. I don't fix things. I destroy them. You know that."

"It's not the only way," the Doctor said.

"Opposing forces," Alia pointed out. "Two sides of the same coin. Opposite but inseparable, so one cannot exist without the other. You told me something like that, and then so did Sam. I wouldn't have heard it from both of you if it wasn't true, and I got the short straw."

"There's always a choice."

Alia threw up her arms. "Then show it to me, because I don't see it. If I do what I have to, you say that I'll destroy the world. Fine. Then, maybe I'll get home. But even if I don't do anything—like you want me to—even if I stay here for the rest of my life, then the world will still end, Doctor, because Grace won't be coming back as long as I'm here, and I'm not going to live her life like she did."

The Doctor looked at her for a moment. "You've been leaping for a long time."

It wasn't a question, but Alia confirmed the statement anyway, bitterly saying, "Years."

"Don't let it harden you, Alia," the Doctor said. "You can't. If you do, you'll never—"

"Never what?" Alia interrupted. "Never see the choice that's supposed to be offered to me to free me? I've been waiting, Doctor. I've spent all my time waiting. I don't want to wait anymore. I just…. I just want to go home."

The Doctor shook his head. "It's not home you crave, Alia. You were right the first time. It's freedom. Freedom to make up your own mind, make your own choices. But you can do that _here_, can't you see? That's precisely what I'm asking you to do."

Now Alia shook her head. "No, it's not. You're _telling_ me. 'Don't do that,' you say. 'You can't do that. You have to do this.'" Her imitation of his voice was rather good, she thought, considering she hadn't had any time to practice it. Another skill honed by years of leaping. Not gained by necessity to mimic the leapee—the voice pattern seemed to come with the aura, thankfully—but by other forms of trickery that she'd had to use. "How is that," Alia continued, "any more of a choice than what I'm already facing? Even if I did have the luxury to choose, neither is appealing. Neither gets me what I really want." She paused, then added, "And even if they did manage to drag me out of this leap like they did when I encountered Sam, the consequences—" She broke off. "I really can't go through that again. I don't think I'd survive."

"Alia—"

"You don't know what they did to me, Doctor. It was _hell_. Worse than hell. It was…." She trailed off, shaking her head, unable to find the right words.

He needed to explain this in a different way, and she knew he knew it. He was clearly trying to show her something, but she still didn't see it. She wasn't really surprised that she didn't understand him. The more she learned, the less she understood. He clearly thought something terrible would happen if she did precisely what they wanted her to do, what she needed to do to leap on, but as far as she was concerned, it was necessary, and he wasn't doing a very good job of convincing her otherwise.

"When Grace was a child," the Doctor began slowly, "she dreamed of being able to hold back death. Did you dream of travelling through time, Alia? Because you're achieving that dream, right now. But if you keep doing what you're doing, you won't let Grace achieve hers. And if she doesn't, if I don't _help_ her do that, then you're not just shattering her dream. You'd be shattering yours. And do you know why you'd be shattering yours? Because if Grace doesn't help me, in her future, because of something you do here now, we can't turn back time and hold back death, and then reality collapses, Alia. And no one's safe. Not here, not anywhere. You'd only be killing yourself."

Alia shifted her stance, straightening, and looked the Doctor in the eye. "Fine," she said simply. "At least then it'll be over." And, ignoring the Doctor's protests, she turned away.

* * *

><p>"I don't know!" Grace shrieked. "I don't know who that is. I don't, really, I swear, I don't!"<p>

Zoey paused, just briefly, to regard the sobbing young woman in front of her. She'd blurted out other things they'd needed to know by this point in the past. She'd known that a stronger resolve would require more persuasive measures and had proceeded accordingly. She usually had the results she wanted by now. "Then explain," Zoey ordered coldly, "why this Dr. Smith appears to know you."

"I can't," Grace insisted, her breathing still ragged. "I don't know a Dr. John Smith." A few more breaths, then, "I don't know anyone who fits that description. I can't tell you anything. Please."

Zoey's lip curled. "But he recognizes you. He knows your name. Why would that be?"

"I don't know," Grace repeated. "I don't know. I don't know. Please, you have to believe me. I don't know."

"Perhaps you need some time to think on the matter, then," Zoey said. "And a little incentive to sharpen your memory." She reached for one of the tools of her trade.

"No," Grace protested, "no, please. No. No. No!" She screamed again as Zoey began, working slowly as usual, trying to draw the process out. "No! I can't tell you anything! I don't know!" Another sharp cry, and then choked sobs.

Zoey smiled at her. "Do let me know if you recall anything, dear," she said, and then she left the Holding Chamber.

* * *

><p>"Any luck?" Thames asked, looking up from Lothos as Zoey entered the Control Room.<p>

"No," Zoey said sharply, much to Thames's surprise. Zoey could usually get information out of anyone—except for Dr. Smith. But she never spoke about that, and he knew better than to mention it. "Our leapee insists that she hasn't any idea what I'm talking about."

"Still?" Thames asked incredulously.

Zoey glared at him. "Still," she agreed, her tone telling him precisely how furious that little fact made her. That did not bode well—for anyone.

"I'll get the Imaging Chamber online," Thames said, working with Lothos to do precisely that even before Zoey gave her approval.

Zoey frowned for a moment, then nodded. "Yes. That will be for the best. I'll see what Alia has learned." She turned and left without another word.

Thames went through the rest of the processes, making sure he had Zoey centred on Alia and that he could hear Zoey's part of the conversation, but silenced his end. He'd open it up again if Zoey asked him anything, but he wanted to check the feed from the Holding Chamber, and he didn't want Zoey to know.

It was something he wouldn't have dared to do before, but Lothos didn't hold Zoey in as high esteem as he had before the incident with Sam Beckett. Alia's failing had not reflected well on Zoey. She was still favoured, Thames knew. He wouldn't dare cross her. But he knew Lothos wouldn't object to this. All he intended to do was hear the leapee's words for himself, something Zoey had asked him to do in the past, in an attempt to get another perspective when she felt she needed it. It hadn't happened often, but it had happened often enough to make his actions acceptable.

Thames didn't have Zoey's skill, but he'd questioned as many of the leapee's as she had. And from what he saw on the recording…. "She's telling the truth," Thames concluded, surprised. He knew why Zoey hadn't accepted that—the leapee's statements, as the truth, didn't make sense, not when Alia had told them Dr. Smith had recognized Grace and apparently knew her well enough to want to talk to her.

Something wasn't right. Even memories lost due to the Swiss cheese effect would come back, at least in part, with reminders, and Zoey had provided the leapee with plenty of those. Grace Holloway did not know Dr. Smith, but he knew her. He'd met her before, and it probably wasn't just in passing.

Thames started punching things into Lothos, trying to get another scenario. He nearly had all the facts that he knew formatted into the equation when the screen he was working at went blank. He cursed at it, trying to get Lothos to display the information on another screen, coaxing him with the reverence that was his due, but to no avail. The information, Lothos told him, had been corrupted. It could not be recovered.

Thames was good with electronics. Not as good as Dr. Smith had been, but good enough to get them by. He'd managed to reroute a few things with their retrieval system after Dr. Smith had destroyed it, after all. He hadn't gotten it perfect, but they had gained a measure of control over Alia's leaps, and they could—at least, they usually could—pull her out and route her into another leap, giving her a new assignment. When something with their systems malfunctioned, he was the one in charge of fixing it, or of delegating the work. He knew how Lothos worked, all his moods and all his circuitry, and he was invaluable because of that. But however much he knew, it wasn't helping him now.

The information was gone.

Thames started muttering to himself again, trying to figure out another way to recover it. Before he got very far, however, one of their security alarms started sounding. There was unauthorized movement on level eight, in one of their storage rooms. Probably one of the new staff who had been hired as replacements. They'd need replacing themselves after this. No matter; if they made a good example of this one, the others would think twice before trying anything. Checking that Zoey wouldn't need anything, Thames went to deal with the errant lackey who foolishly thought he could pull something without their knowing it. He enjoyed dealing with those things.

He got a certain amount of pleasure in catching people who knew precisely how much trouble they were in and what the consequences of their actions were—and how long it would take them to pay.


	7. Chapter 7

"What else am I supposed to tell you?" Alia asked Zoey. "It wasn't exactly a long conversation. He knew something was wrong. I told him I was having a bad day. He kept pushing it, but I finally said I had class and left."

"And you haven't learned _any_ more about him?" Zoey asked, her displeasure evident.

Alia shifted the weight of her book bag on her shoulder. "No. For all his talking, he doesn't say much." She paused, then added, "Except, I think he's here to see Grace about something. He says he wants my help with something. He hasn't really explained what. He doesn't seem to be very good at that."

"Odd," Zoey remarked. Alia glanced at her, not liking her tone. "The leapee," Zoey continued, "claims she hasn't any idea who he is."

"Swiss-cheesed?" Alia guessed.

"Or lying," Zoey said.

Or telling the truth, Alia figured. The Doctor had said that Grace hadn't met him yet. He only knew who she was because he was a time traveller, and he and Grace had held back death, whatever that meant, at some point in the future.

"She's not going to change her story if it's because she can't remember," Alia said, hoping she could get Zoey to agree.

"Oh, you'd be surprised," Zoey replied, smirking slightly. "The tales tongues tell with a bit of incentive!"

Alia frowned, and then went back to the subject of the Doctor. "He doesn't live here," she said. "If he did, he'd either be at a job or looking for one, not wandering around a park. He's probably just on vacation, so try running the records for any evidence of that, if Thames hasn't done it already."

"We have, and we haven't turned anything up," Zoey answered sharply. "It's not your place to make suggestions, Alia, unless it's related to your assignment."

"Well, this is an assignment, isn't it?" Alia retorted. "You told me to find out what I could about him. I am. And, if you're interested, I'm also working on Andrew. I'm trying to shake his confidence. I started by breaking routine. We skipped out on the study session in the library in favour of a walk, where Dr. Smith caught up with us. If he doesn't feel prepared, he's not going to do well."

"You'll need to do better than that, Alia, darling."

"I will," Alia answered curtly, "but I'm not usually pulling double duty. Zoey, can't you figure out this mess about Dr. Smith without me?"

Zoey stopped suddenly, and Alia walked a few steps without her before realizing it. "What?" she asked as she turned back, wanting to know what her partner was thinking.

"You're not in any position to complain, Alia," Zoey reminded her coldly. Alia couldn't suppress a shiver at the tone and was glad, not for the first time, that Zoey was just a hologram for her now. "But we do have another plan to lure Dr. Smith to us, yes. If he knows the leapee, and if we can somehow get the information to him that Grace Holloway is our leapee, he'll come to us like a fly to honey, and we'll have him _precisely_ where we want him."

"You think he'll take this personally?" Alia asked. It wasn't illogical. The Doctor did know Grace, after all—and thought highly of her, based on how he'd spoken about her and what they'd done together. "But how are you going to leak who the leapee is?"

"Thames suspects that it may not be necessary," Zoey informed her stiffly. "He believes Dr. Smith may have managed to hide something at the Project that we have yet to uncover."

"You think he bugged you?" Alia asked. She considered this for a moment. The idea worked in her favour. It would be easier for her to tell the Doctor Zoey's plan and have him deal with that than for her to continue evading him whenever he came asking for help for something she still didn't understand. If he went off to the Project to check up on Grace, she'd be able to complete her assignment in peace and leap out without having to worry about him and whatever he wanted.

"We aren't dismissing the possibility," Zoey replied. "But it makes your task no less important. We need to know more about him, Alia. That shouldn't be too difficult for you to do. He certainly talks enough."

"But he never says anything!" Alia protested. She saw a few heads turn her way and started walking again. Zoey moved a few feet ahead of her, then moved in step with her. "I've already told you what I've learned. I can't guarantee that I'll find out anything more, let alone anything of value."

"I'll judge what's of value, Alia, not you," Zoey said. "And—_what_?"

"What?" Alia asked, stopping again to glance around to see what Zoey could have noticed.

"Are you sure, Thames?" Zoey asked, a smile slowly spreading across her face. "Oh, how simply _delightful_!"

"What is it?" Alia asked again, knowing now that Zoey's reaction was due to something Thames had said.

Zoey laughed. "Oh, he _came_! The fool actually _came_! Do find out what you can, Alia. I'll check back with you shortly." And without waiting for Alia's response, Zoey left the Imaging Chamber.

Alia knew Zoey well enough to know what it was. The Doctor had turned up at the Project after all. She vaguely wondered when he'd left, but decided it didn't matter. If he was gone, she could get to work, and that's all that mattered to her. Soon she'd have one more successful assignment under her belt, and she'd be on to the next one. She just wished that each leap would bring her towards the end of it all—towards home, if not towards the freedom the Doctor had hinted at when she'd first met him, before she'd properly understood precisely what she was getting into.

She'd been heading in the direction in which Andrew had taken off, but realized that she didn't know where to go. She decided it didn't matter, and found a bench between a couple of trees and settled down there instead. She wouldn't have paid any attention in class anyway. She usually just attended to keep routine, or to keep an eye on whoever would be affected by her assignment, and she generally spent the time trying to figure out what to do—and as far as that went, she could do that just as easily here.

She'd hardly settled down before the Doctor plopped down beside her.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, surprised.

"Well, I wasn't finished," the Doctor said. "You did just walk off without letting me finish, you know. Even _I_ know that's rude. That's not to say that I haven't done it, but I usually have a better reason than you, because I don't think you really have a very good reason at all."

"But I thought you were back at the Project!" Alia exclaimed. "Zoey just—" She stopped, realizing striking her. Of course—time travel. Sometimes it wasn't an advantage for her at all.

"And why would you think that?" the Doctor asked, though she suspected from his expression that he already knew the answer.

"Zoey said you'd come," Alia admitted. "She just left a few minutes ago."

"Oh, I'll bet those were her exact words," the Doctor agreed, frowning. "And why did she think I would come?"

"You don't know?" Alia asked sceptically.

The Doctor sighed. "Well, I suppose I can guess." He paused. "It's Grace, isn't it?"

Alia nodded.

"What do they think, Alia? About me? What have you said?"

More questioning, always about the other party. Some things didn't change, apparently. She was supposed to answer all the questions put to her like a good little girl, no matter who was asking. "I haven't told them anything definitive," she replied carefully, noting the Doctor's relief, "but they could very well figure it out for themselves. I can't hide things from them forever."

"Well, you're doing a very good job of it now," the Doctor said encouragingly. "But what else? Why do they think I came, then, if they don't know what I am? How would I know?"

"Because you're clever?" Alia suggested, smirking. It wasn't entirely untrue; it would take a clever man indeed to keep something hidden right under the noses of the Project's staff for so many years.

The Doctor grinned. "Oh, they never were entirely satisfied with that excuse." He waited for her to continue, but she did not, and then he began his own musings. It took less than thirty seconds for him to figure it out. "They think I tampered with something, left something behind, and am keeping tabs on them, don't they? Not entirely without reason. I did leave an inhibitor of sorts behind, just to make things a bit difficult for them when they went digging around for more information on me. Mind you, if they realized that I turned up, then they must've figured out a way to bypass it. Not entirely, but slightly, just enough so that I register. That's…not a very good sign. Especially if that bypassing isn't entirely due to actions on _their_ part. The inhibitor draws its energy from—" The Doctor broke off, looking alarmed. "Oh, I'd better hope that they're very, very clever, and that that inhibitor of mine was a bit of shoddy workmanship from a rush job."

Alia studied his worried face for a moment. "What's the alternative?"

"Not good," the Doctor confessed, running one hand through his hair. "But that's all the more reason, Alia, for you to stop whatever you're doing. Whatever you do to Andrew will affect Grace, and I can't let that happen. I just can't. Grace is too important."

"I'm not doing anything to Grace, Doctor," Alia reminded him patiently. She knew they tracked things at the Project—the effects of her leaps, recording the original history alongside what was now true, after she'd changed things—and all they'd ever been concerned about in the long run was the target of her assignment, not the person she'd leaped into to complete it.

"No, no, you don't understand," the Doctor persisted, precisely as he had before. Alia couldn't help but wonder if their conversation would be any different. "Andrew doesn't matter, not on the larger scale. I mean, yes, he matters, everyone does, but nothing in his future is fixed. You couldn't change it if it were. Whether you acknowledge it or not, you're affecting Grace, and you can't change _anything_ related to her, do you understand me? You can't. You have to stop, right now."

"As I said, Doctor," Alia repeated, "I'm not affecting Grace, despite what you think."

"But you _are_!" the Doctor insisted. "Look at this, all of it! You're doing the worst thing you could be doing—you're destroying her dreams."

"They're just dreams," Alia shot back, "and I ought to know that sometimes a dream come true is a horrible thing."

The Doctor looked sympathetic for a moment. "You and me both," he murmured, more to himself than to her. But then he shook his head and continued his tirade, saying, "Alia, you can't change this. You just can't. You can't control the effects of _any_ change you make, let alone this one."

"So that's why you're here?" Alia demanded. "To stop me from making changes? You had your chance, Doctor, long before this ever began. They might never have figured out how to set me leaping if you hadn't helped them, Doctor, but you did, and now I'm changing things, just like they want me to. You shouldn't complain about the results when you helped begin it all."

"I _had_ to, Alia. I kept saying I'm sorry, and I still am, but I _had _to."

"No, you didn't! You cursed me to this, Doctor. You—"

"Alia, listen to me," the Doctor said, interrupting her. "You would have been leaping anyway, even if I had never turned up. But things wouldn't have been quite the same. They would have been worse." He saw her open her mouth in protest and added, "You may not be able to imagine _worse_, Alia, but believe me, it exists. And I wasn't about to let that happen. I couldn't. If I'd left them to their own devices, they'd've…." He trailed off. "If things didn't work out as they did, exactly as they did, because I helped, everything would have ended. I kept saying that I would get something out of being there, Alia, out of helping them, and that's what it was—the preservation of time and space and everything it holds together."

"You can't preserve something by ensuring change," Alia snapped. "It doesn't work like that. That's completely contradictory."

"No," the Doctor said, "it's not. It's exactly what I told you last time. It all happened once, so it needed to happen again. All I was doing was making sure it happened the same way. Well, not the same way, but to the same end."

Alia frowned at him. "You're talking like there are two levels of the same thing."

"More than two," the Doctor corrected. "Many more than two. Even in that instance, there were more than two levels. There was the original history, as things were without you or Sam. Then there was the history where you and Sam were both leaping as you had, originally. And then there's what I changed, by mistake, and it was the consequences of that mistake that I had to divert. I had to set that mistake right, because I couldn't go back and change that mistake once I'd made it. That's what I was doing at the Project—trying to put things back into place, to that second level, where both you and Sam were leaping. I couldn't do it perfectly, of course, and that's why there's a fourth level, which is what we're on now—the changed but corrected level." The Doctor paused for a moment. "I think that's about it, for the basic levels. All the rest would require a bit more explaining, and acknowledging them isn't really necessary for our purposes. Neither you nor Sam were really involved in their creation, after all. I had a role in a few. Well, some of them. Well, the majority, but still. You didn't, and that's all that really matters now."

Alia stared at him for a moment, and then she said, "Four _basic_ levels? But I only know—"

"The last one, yes," the Doctor cut in gently, "because that's all you can remember, now. Same idea as when you leap, really. One level moves on top of another, covering up what originally happened, overwriting it. It's more overwriting than rewriting, really. Rewriting things is a bit different, more in depth, though that's not to say I've not said both when meaning the same thing in previous explanations, just because—"

"You're not like either of us, are you?" Alia asked, interrupting him. "Me or Sam. It's not just keeping your own aura and always being yourself, or the measure of control you have over where and when you end up, or even a different method of time travel, which you mentioned before. There's more, isn't there?"

The Doctor nodded, but didn't volunteer any information.

"How can you remember all those different levels?" Alia asked, biting her lip, not entirely sure she wanted to know the answer.

"I don't have to remember them," the Doctor said quietly. "I do, but it's not like it's easy to forget." He read her expression and sighed, adding, "I can see them."

"But…how is that even possible?"

"I'm the Doctor," he replied, a trace of a smile on his face.

"But that doesn't…." Alia trailed off, trying to remember everything he'd told her the first time. She couldn't recall it all—she never could anymore, it seemed—but she did remember a few things. "I don't understand this," she admitted, "but I think you do."

"Oh, yes," the Doctor agreed. "Every bit of it." He paused, then said, "And that's why you have to listen to me, Alia, and why you have to help me. Like I said before, things are cracking. We can't let that happen."

"So what's the choice, then?" Alia asked. "The choice that I can't see. What is it?"

"Aren't you going to try looking for it first?" the Doctor asked quietly, in a tone of voice that told her he was rather sorry she wasn't.

"I've tried," Alia replied shortly. "It's not there. So what do you see that I can't?"

"You're supposed to get Andrew to pursue a different career than cardiology," the Doctor said. "And that's fine. You can change that. Go ahead. But don't do any more than that. Don't make this Grace's fault. Don't do anything she'll regret for the rest of her life. Don't take your assignment any further than you have to, Alia. You're not going to get extra credit. Just…talk to him. Convince him that he should do something else. You'll be clear to leap out then, and Grace can come back, and you won't have done anything to harm her. And if she's fine, if her future's unharmed, I should be able to patch the cracks."

"There's a tiny problem with that choice of yours, Doctor," Alia pointed out. "Andrew knows who I am. He knows I'm not Grace. He's not going to listen me, so I'm not going to leap out."

"Yes, you will," the Doctor countered. "I wouldn't have told Andrew if it mattered. Too much depends on this for me to muck it up like that."

"How can it not matter?" Alia retorted. "It always matters!"

"Well, that's debatable," the Doctor said, "but, fair point. You don't know for sure, do you? But hasn't anyone ever found out before? Haven't you ever told anyone? Sam has, and he still leaped."

"I can see Sam getting away with it," Alia muttered. "He helps people."

"You can help people, too, Alia, if you help me now. Please, even if you don't understand the danger of the cracks or the importance of Grace's future, please, just understand that you don't have to do any more than discourage Andrew from pursuing cardiology for his career to leap successfully, no matter what they tell you. That would be changing things enough."

"And how would you know?" Alia asked. "You don't have anyone like Lothos computing the probabilities of outcomes for you, do you?"

The Doctor shook his head. "No. I do that all myself. Just…trust me, Alia. Please."

Trust him, he said. How could she trust him, really? She didn't know anything about him. She didn't know who he really was. And however similar she'd thought him to herself and Sam at first, she knew he wasn't, and everything he said confirmed that. He was different from both of them. He'd admitted that himself.

He knew a lot, too. About Sam, and about her. He might even know what happened to them, whether or not they ever managed to get home, to stop leaping. But she doubted he'd tell her if he did. He hadn't even really said why Grace was so important, what she had to do in her future. Something about dreams, and how he'd helped her make sure hers came true. But even that didn't make sense. How could someone hold back death? Put it off for a time, yes. She could see that. Everyone wanted to do that, and entering the medical profession was a good way to make sure that dream came true. But the way the Doctor had said they needed to hold back death together, him and Grace, implied something more than that, and she wasn't sure what.

She wasn't entirely sure she really wanted to know, either.

He'd said he'd had to set her leaping, that she would've been doing this anyway, even if he hadn't interfered. But she still felt like he'd cursed her to this, and she wasn't finding it easy to forgive him. She couldn't remember everything he'd told her at the Project, but she knew he'd been trying to tell her she wouldn't see it as an escape like she once had. And he was right. Now, she was just looking for an escape from it, and from what she could tell, he wasn't going to offer it to her even though she was fairly sure he could, if he only tried. She was angry at him for that. She knew it, and didn't bother hiding it because she was fairly certain he knew it, too. He wanted her trust, he said, but he also wanted her forgiveness.

He knew she wouldn't listen to him, wouldn't trust him, until she could forgive him.

But she couldn't forgive him until she understood, and despite how he tried explaining it, she didn't. All she'd learned was how different he was, and that just made her more wary. She didn't even know who he really was. He knew more about her than she did about him. Everything she'd known about him was a lie. The only truth she'd discovered was that he was a time traveller, though not one quite like her or Sam.

Slowly, Alia shook her head. "I can't," she said. "I'm sorry."

The Doctor blinked at her, looking utterly and completely startled by her response. She wondered how many times he'd asked that someone trust him and been refused. Evidently, it didn't happen very often.

"But…." The Doctor just stared at her, trying to sputter out a response. "But…but…why not?"

"I find it very hard to trust people, Doctor," Alia replied quietly. "If leaping through time has taught me anything, it's never to trust people. People betray your trust."

"Not all the time," the Doctor protested.

"I don't know who you really are, Doctor," Alia said softly, "and if I don't know enough to judge for myself what sort of person someone is, I don't trust them."

"But the _cracks_," the Doctor insisted, repeating himself yet again. "Alia, don't you understand about the cracks?"

"No, Doctor," Alia informed him simply. "I don't. No matter how many times you explain it, I don't get it. It's important to you. I understand that. But I don't understand about the cracks themselves, or how you can fix it, or why you think you need me to help you. Because where I stand now, I can't understand anything, so I couldn't help you if I wanted to."

The Doctor looked at her for a moment, then said, "If I can get you to understand it, will you help me, even if you refuse to entirely trust me?"

Alia raised an eyebrow at that, giving him an incredulous look. "You want me to forfeit my right to make my own decisions after preaching to me that I can make up my own mind, make my own choices, and not have to do everything in my assignment to the letter?"

The Doctor frowned at her. "You know what I mean," he chastised gently.

Alia sighed. "If these cracks are as terrible as you think they are, and if they would affect me even when I'm not living my life through in a linear, orderly fashion like everyone else, then why wouldn't I want to help if I actually could?" She hoped he knew what she was asking. She understood that he thought they were bad, and that everyone ought to, but she still wasn't convinced that she could do anything to help him, or that anything she did do wouldn't jeopardize her assignment.

The Doctor grinned. "I knew you'd come around!" he chirped, jumping up. "Come on, then. I've got something to show you."

"I can't, not right now," Alia said. "I've got my assignment. I can't ignore that."

The Doctor bounced on his feet for a moment, looking like he expected her to continue, to follow her statement with a reconsideration. When she didn't, he shook his head and said, "No, that'll hold. This won't. I've waited quite long enough, Alia. You keep trying to run from me, and now that you finally agreed not to, I want to do my very best to convince you to help me, since evidently everything else I've said isn't sufficient."

Alia got to her feet, still looking dubious. "What can you possibly show me now that you weren't going to show me before?"

"Oh, you know," the Doctor said, waving a hand as he started off to wherever they were going. "This'n'that. Bit more of that than this, really."

Alia raised her eyebrows, but followed him anyhow. "You seem fairly confident that I'll be willing to endanger my assignment to help you now. If you're so sure that this will convince me, why not just show me straight off?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Some secrets I keep if I can, particularly around the sorts of people you associate with."

Alia stopped then. "Is this secret about the cracks or about you?" she asked.

"Bit of both," the Doctor answered cheerfully. "Come along."

Alia ran to catch up with him. He hadn't waited for her. "But what if Zoey turns up?"

"She won't," the Doctor replied.

"And how can you be so sure about that?"

"Well," the Doctor began reasonably, "if you're right, and I'm at the Project, she'll be a bit more concerned about that me than this me, won't she?" Alia was about to concede that point, but before she had the chance, the Doctor continued, "And, well, once we get there, she won't be able to get a lock on you anyway."

"But you can't know that."

The Doctor glanced at her. "I did help them put everything together, you know. Even if they've carried out extensive modifications, they're not going to be able to overcome that particular barrier." He paused. "Al couldn't get a lock on Sam, after all, and the technology's the same."

"Sam knows about this?" Alia asked. "What else does he know?"

"Oh, he knows quite a lot. Mind you, he worked most of it out himself," the Doctor said. "Well, and he leaped into me, so that would've explained a bit more."

"He—_what_?" Alia nearly stopped in her tracks again. "And you never told me any of this?"

"You didn't need to know," the Doctor pointed out.

"When did he leap into you?"

"Round about the same time I was at your Project."

"Then that was Sam?"

"No, that was me," the Doctor said. "If it had been Sam, I wouldn't've recognized you as yourself, now would I? And Al wouldn't have been surprised when you and Sam ran into each other, even if Sam might've forgotten. No, Sam leaped into me after you two met up."

"But you said Sam leaped into you at the same time I started leaping," Alia said. "How can he _not_ have known?"

"It's…." The Doctor stopped and turned to face her. "I'm a time traveller, Alia. You know that, and you know how complicated things can get because of that. But my life is even more complicated than yours. Originally, the first time I ran into Sam was no more than a few months back. But then something went wrong, and Sam leaped into me _years_ before that, and things changed. My timeline split, essentially, and I'm lucky to have it together in one piece now. Thing is, that change…. That wasn't instantaneous. It took a while for the effects to be felt."

He seemed to be waiting for her to say something. Alia just gave him a baffled look. "I don't get it."

The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck. "You know that I don't leap through time like you do," he said. "I can control where and when I go. Well, for the most part. Well, if nothing unexpected comes up. Well, so long as—" The Doctor broke off, shaking his head. "_Any_way," he continued, drawing out the first part of the word, "I have a good deal more control over it than you do. So, I can go back to where I've been. And, I did. Sort of. I didn't end up _precisely_ where I should've, but then again, by that point, I hadn't ended up in the same place _anyway_, so technically I _was_ going back to the same place, even if that wasn't the same place it had been for me originally."

"I really hope you don't expect me to understand that," Alia informed him.

The Doctor sighed. "No, suppose I can't," he admitted. "Least, not when you don't know everything. But you can understand the gist of it, can't you? When Sam leaped into me and changed things, I went back, and I _realized_ that. So I was with Sam, and I was also at the Project. Sam's project, I mean. That me, from years back—_he's_ the one who went to _your_ Project. I was never there, originally. But once Sam changed that, and based on that other mistake of mine that I was trying to fix up, at that point before I had made it, though by then I realized that I had to make it again anyway or I wouldn't have any reason to fix it up in the first place, I had to go to your Project." Perhaps catching sight of her expression, the Doctor added, "It goes back to seeing all those different levels, Alia, and remembering each of them. So, it's been a couple years for me since I've been to your Project, and it's been a couple years since Sam leaped into me, but it wasn't that long ago that I, as myself, exactly like this, nearly didn't exist any longer, all because of that."

Alia figured that the Doctor calling his life complicated was more than a little bit of an understatement. She still wasn't sure what he meant—it sounded like he'd interacted with himself in the past when he shouldn't have, but she knew there had to be more to it than that—but she'd asked enough questions of him to know that asking more wouldn't necessarily make anything clearer. She tried to pick apart the last thing he'd said, mentally analyzing the only bit she knew she could recall correctly, but it sounded like he was telling her that he shouldn't exist anymore, but he clearly did, so she knew she couldn't have that right. "So what happened?"

"Oh, a bit of clever work on my part meant that I could pull myself together," the Doctor answered. Alia was a bit puzzled by that; his tone said he was joking, but his eyes told her he was completely serious. Before she could ask him about it, though, he added, "Things don't quite fit right yet, to be perfectly honest. Even I shouldn't really know those two different levels as well as I do. They're on the same plane, those levels. I didn't bury the first one, covering it up with the second, like what should happen, like what happens when you change something. I was too afraid to do that. I kept them equal instead. Trouble is, they can't be kept side by side; they occupy the same space. Not that it's something that can actually occupy space, but you know what I mean. It would be like…like if Zoey stood in the same place you were, you'd both be occupying the same space. Except that's not quite right, because you're not equal; she's just a hologram. But you get the idea." He blew out a breath, then glanced at her and grinned. "Clear as mud?" he ventured.

"Sure isn't crystal," Alia muttered. Louder, she added, "But I think I'm starting to understand why Grace is so important to you. You don't want me to accidentally change anything for her, allowing a new level to assert itself."

"Well, yes," the Doctor allowed hesitantly, starting off again, "but it's what I said before, really. I need to help Grace's dream come true. Any change of yours, intentional or not, could influence that. At the moment, _is_ influencing that. Which is my trouble. You keep denying that Grace will be affected by this, Alia, but she is. Whatever path you're on right now affects her, and it affects her enough that things in her future change, and that's causing the cracks."

"And you can see those cracks, then, like you can see the levels?"

"Only if I look for them," the Doctor said. "If I didn't have to look for them, I'd be…. Oh, it wouldn't be good, Alia. It'd probably be too far gone for me to patch. Well, no, not exactly," he amended, reconsidering. "More like, I could patch it, but it wouldn't be the same as before. Things would be different. Not sure how different, though, and that's the trouble. Things aren't supposed to be different than they were originally."

"But I change things all the time," Alia pointed out. "Sam and I both do. We change the original history."

"Ah, but that's the thing," the Doctor countered. "Both you and Sam. Together. Maintains a balance. And, well, the sorts of things you two change are just small things. Well, most of them are small things. Well, on the larger scale, they're _all_ small things, but some of the small things are bigger than the other small things. Point is, you never try to change something you can't." He paused, then added, "Well, until now."

"So that's who you really are, then?" Alia asked. "You go through history, trying to preserve the big things? It doesn't matter if small things change in the process?"

The Doctor turned to look at her, grinning from ear to ear. "Oh, that's the best description of me you've come up with yet, Alia. Yes. Best think of me like that."

Alia was relieved to have finally figured something out when a thought struck her, and she'd voiced it before she'd thought twice. "How _much_ of history, exactly?" she asked.

"Oh," the Doctor said quietly, "I expect it's a bit more than you're thinking right now." And though she asked, he refused to elaborate, and kept walking on in silence. She had no choice but to follow.

* * *

><p>AN: All right, so things are finally starting to pick up. I will admit, it took me longer than I thought it would to get to this point. Sorry. But, well, I haven't received any complaints specifically about that, so I suppose it was tolerable enough. Thanks to everyone who has left me a comment or two (or five or six); I appreciate it.


	8. Chapter 8

The Doctor still wasn't entirely sure if he should have come quite yet, but it was too late to be second guessing himself now. Besides, coming here told him quite a bit. Well, he'd have to double check with someone here, but from what he could tell, just by being here—something wasn't quite right. It just all felt a bit…off. That…couldn't be good.

He hoped he was just imagining things.

Still. First things first. Even if he knew they knew he'd go there first, even if it meant walking into something they'd planned, he still had to check on Grace before he did anything else.

She wasn't anyone he properly knew, not yet, but she would be, and he wouldn't have her changed by this.

It had been a few years since he'd been to what Project Quantum Leap had dubbed the Evil Leaper Project—for both of them. They may have a few tricks up their sleeves that he didn't know about, but if they thought that would be enough to catch him and keep him, they'd be sorely mistaken. He knew most of the tricks, after all, and he'd used a fair few himself. But, he preferred to play on their predictable feelings of superiority and let them underestimate him before he let them realize that he had the upper hand and had had it all along. He'd fight if he had to, but as good as he was with a sword, words were his weapon of choice, and he'd proven that time and again.

That they would see that as a weakness only assured his eventual success.

The Doctor reached the Holding Chamber, remembering the last time he'd been in there, and used the sonic screwdriver to open the door, slipping inside and closing it behind him. It was dark inside, and he turned the lights on, just a few of them, so that they cast some light into the gloom.

"Oh, Grace," the Doctor said softly when he got his first good look inside the Holding Chamber. "I am so very sorry that you had to go through this."

Grace Holloway eyed him warily. She was sitting up on the table in the middle of the room. He remembered that table. His memories of it weren't particularly pleasant. "Who…who are you?" she asked, not quite managing to keep her voice from shaking.

The Doctor gave her a small smile and moved closer, but still kept a large enough distance away until she was ready to trust him. He didn't expect her to be too trusting of anyone at this point. "A friend," he replied. "Really, that's all. I swear. It's not a trick."

"But how do I know…." Grace trailed off, eyes leaving his face for a moment to dart around the room around them. "How do I know," she started again, more strongly now, "that that's true?"

"Because you told me your dream," the Doctor answered quietly, holding a hand out to her. "You told me why you want to become a doctor, why you _will_ become a doctor. And I'm going to help you achieve that dream, Grace. Just…not quite yet, for you. But I promise you, you will be able to hold back death. And I'll help. We'll do it, you and me, together."

Grace caught her breath, and then slowly she nodded. "All right," she agreed. "But you'll have to help me. My ankle's broken." She paused, then admitted, "It hurts."

The Doctor's expression darkened, but he nodded and dropped his hand. "I'll fix that up for you," he said. "We can't have you going back injured. Only…you have to understand, Grace. I'm going to help you. But I can't—" He broke off, not sure she'd really want to hear what was coming next. "I can't take you out of here."

Grace immediately shrank back. "But you said—"

"I never said I'd get you out of here," the Doctor interrupted as gently as he could. "I said I'd help you. Now, and in your future. Thing is, Grace Holloway, I can't take you out of this room. If I do, you won't be able to get back. The only way I can help you escape is by leaving you here."

"Then why did you even come?" she asked bitterly.

She thought he'd betrayed her the minute she'd given him her trust. He couldn't have her thinking that. She wouldn't like what came next if she did. "Grace, listen to me, very carefully," the Doctor said. He'd walked over to her now, crouching slightly so that he was level with her. She wasn't strapped to the table now, fortunately, though he had no doubt that she had been before. They probably knew she wouldn't be up to moving about.

"But how can you help me if you're going to leave me here?" Grace demanded. He could see the silent tears running down her cheeks. They hadn't broken her yet, not if she was defiant enough to argue with him rather than give into her pain. That was a comfort.

"The only way out of this nightmare," the Doctor said, "is the same way you got here. And I'm afraid that's the part you can't control. I can't, either, not really, but I'm going to do my best to influence it." He grinned then. "And, if I do say so myself, my best is _very_ good."

"But not quite good enough, is it?" a voice sneered.

Grace shrank away, and the Doctor spun around, spying Zoey at the door to the Holding Chamber. "I knew you'd come back," Zoey continued. "You—"

"Never mind _me_," the Doctor interrupted. He gestured at Grace. "Was it _really_ necessary to hurt her?"

Zoey laughed. "It's an unfortunate consequence for her, but it's not an important one."

"Maybe not that you can see," the Doctor said. Then he turned his back on her, and asked Grace, "Will you trust me?"

Grace was still staring at Zoey, looking around him to keep her in sight. He didn't fancy not having her in sight, either, but he was listening for her now, and this time he'd hear her coming. The Doctor repeated his question, and Grace, without looking at him, quietly said, "Yes."

The Doctor breathed a sigh of relief. "It'll be over when you wake up," he said. "Just…concentrate of Puccini's works, if you like. _Madame Butterfly_." And then, as gently as he could, he placed his hands on her temples and closed his eyes. A few seconds later, her tense figure fell forward into his arms, limp with sleep, and he lay her down on the table again.

Zoey was watching him with interest. "Learned a few tricks, have you?" she asked, still managing to keep a condescending tone in her voice.

"I know far more tricks than you," the Doctor retorted. "Not all of which I'm proud to know." He'd have to fix Grace's ankle later, maybe even once Alia leaped out of her and she was returned to her own time. Granted, if he was lucky, the travelling process would take the brunt of the healing upon itself. It would certainly take care of any bruises or nicks or whatever else she'd be left with after Zoey's sessions. He wondered if they'd realized that yet. The passage of time that healed them was the same thing that sustained the leapers, allowing them to continue on leap after leap with little rest.

"Is that so?" Zoey drawled, looking unimpressed. "You clearly didn't share them with your friends."

The Doctor risked a glance at Grace, giving himself time to assess the rest of her injuries, or at least those he could see. They were…more extensive than he had anticipated, considering the short time she'd been here. "You don't seem to be drawing things out as much as you used to," he commented blandly, looking back at Zoey.

"We needed some necessary information that she didn't feel inclined to give us," Zoey answered lightly, "but she came to her senses in a few days."

"_Days_?" the Doctor repeated, incredulous. No, no, no. Not good. Not good _at all_. He knew he'd arrived at the right time. Alia had told him they had found him before he'd left, and this was clearly the first time Zoey had seen him, so this had to be that time. "How can you say she's been here for _days_? Alia can't've leaped in more than five hours ago! How can—" And here he stopped, realization striking him. It wasn't that he'd miscalculated or any such thing. No use hoping for that; he had to accept what he didn't want to: the situation was far worse than that. The cracks were creating a time differential between the two places, between now and back then, even though, last he'd checked, they were supposed to align so that the passage of time was the same.

That meant that time was either leaking out of then, or leaking into now.

Lovely. The effects of the cracks were becoming noticeable. It wouldn't be too long before more than just minutes started shifting.

The Doctor became aware of Zoey's expression, and he decided he didn't really like it. Not that he expected that she had many expressions he would say he _did_ like, but that particular look held just a bit too much interest in with the rest of the usual malice for his tastes. Now would be a good time to distract her, especially if that expression meant what he figured it meant. "I am not going to let you hurt Grace again," the Doctor informed her darkly.

"You seem to be under the impression that you'll be in a position to stop us," Zoey mused.

"Oh, but that's because I am," the Doctor replied. "But you've realized that, haven't you? That I'm cleverer than you ever gave me credit for? That I've been watching you, waiting, as you've spent years searching for me?" That part wasn't true, but she wouldn't know that. It was what she believed, after all. They didn't know any better, at any rate. "You couldn't keep me here last time. What makes you so sure that you can keep me here this time?"

Zoey smiled at him. "How much of a threat are you going to be to us, Dr. Smith, when you know we can destroy poor Grace's future?"

The Doctor's expression hardened. "You'll regret that," he said gravely.

"Oh, I don't think so," Zoey countered. "You can't even get out of this room. We've got guards at the door. They'll shoot you on sight."

The Doctor's mouth twisted into something that vaguely resembled a smile. "Still worried about the damage I can do, then," he interpreted. He shrugged, then asked nonchalantly, "Shoot to kill?" Zoey just smirked, so the Doctor continued, "And here I thought you liked playing with your food."

"Sometimes threats are better off dealt with in the most direct manner," Zoey replied lightly. "Do enjoy catching up with your dear friend. I have to check in on Alia."

The Doctor stared at the door long after it had closed, but they hadn't bothered to adjust the lighting, so he knew someone was still watching him. The cameras wouldn't work, would hardly carry more than a scratchy, skipping audio, but he couldn't very well do much of anything about two-way mirrors. But they'd still managed to detect him, despite the inhibitor. And he'd known that would happen, too, based on what Alia had told him. Trouble was, given the rather large bit of evidence he had that time was running differently, he couldn't pretend anymore that their detection was unimportant, nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

It wasn't.

That inhibitor…. He had it gathering background radiation as energy, but it wasn't the sort of background radiation anyone at the Project would ever think to look for. Even if they did, it wasn't the sort of thing they could find. Their technology wasn't advanced enough for that. On the other hand, their technology _was_ the sort that ensured a steady supply of the particular type of energy upon which the inhibitor ran.

A disruption to the energy supply while they still had someone leaping about in time was not good.

It meant he shouldn't wait before acting. He didn't have a lot of time to squander. But…. He wouldn't _really_ be wasting time. He needed to be sure that Grace came out of this experience unaffected. Well, relatively unaffected. He wasn't sure even she would be able to entirely rid herself of Alia's stain. It wasn't something he'd ever noticed, but he'd always been a bit too busy to look for it, and if he helped ease things now, it would be even less noticeable.

The Doctor sat down on the table next to Grace, looking her over with a critical eye. It hadn't taken much suggestion to put her to sleep. He suspected pain and fear had been the companions who had kept her awake for too long. He wasn't even sure how long she'd been here now. Longer than he'd first thought.

"I'll keep you safe," the Doctor quietly, squeezing her hand. "I promise." But until he could ensure that she got safely back to her own time, he could patch her up a bit here. Ignoring the fact that someone was probably watching him, the Doctor went to work. They'd hurt one of his friends, and whether or not they acknowledged that, they'd regret it.

* * *

><p>"We're going to the park?" Alia asked finally, thinking that that was probably a question the Doctor would answer. Not that it was the answer to that particular question she wanted—she knew they were going to the park; they were walking into it now—but she hoped that he would realize she was fishing for information and just give it to her.<p>

"Seems like," the Doctor remarked, striding on.

"So whatever you wanted to show me is here, right? Not another ten blocks?"

"We haven't walked ten blocks," the Doctor replied, in a slightly disparaging tone. "And you've probably walked more, so I don't know why you're complaining. Why is it you lot always want to exaggerate?"

Alia frowned at him. It wasn't a complaint, really, and she suspected he knew that. She was just impatient. "Textbooks are heavy, you know," she muttered, shifting the bag on her shoulder again. She should've tried pawning it off on Andrew; she wouldn't have had to worry about it then.

"Oh, give it here, then," the Doctor said, reaching to take the book bag from her. He looked at it critically for a moment before somehow folding it into one of his coat pockets; Alia decided not to ask, figuring she probably wouldn't understand the explanation. "But it's not much further, anyway."

Well, that was something. "What's not much further?" Alia pressed.

"Blimey, you'd think you'd've learned some patience in all your leaping," the Doctor grumbled, but when Alia glanced at him, she saw that he was grinning. "Come on," he said, leading her off the main path, "we'll take the road less travelled."

Alia didn't bother commenting. She just trailed after the Doctor, watching him. He was practically bouncing as he led her along, eagerly striding forward. Considering that she was getting the impression that whatever he was about to show her was a dearly kept secret, he seemed awfully excited to share it.

When the Doctor finally stopped, Alia wasn't sure why. She glanced around, but couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. She was about to ask what he intended to show her when she caught sight of the most _unordinary_ thing out of the corner of her eye. Turning her head to look at it fully, she gaped at the blue police box that was neatly nestled between a couple of trees as if it belonged, even when it so clearly didn't. Alia turned her incredulous look back on the Doctor, saying, "This is your big secret? A police box in the middle of nowhere?"

"Oh, she's a bit more than she appears to be," the Doctor said, pulling out a key as he walked over to unlock the box. "In you go," he said, stepping back to let her by. Alia looked at him doubtfully, but she had no real reason to refuse. She hadn't consciously been expecting anything, but she knew that whatever it had been, it hadn't been what she saw as she opened the door wider and stepped over the threshold.

Tall pillars rose up around her, supporting the ceiling of an impossibly large room. Thick cables twined their way around like vines. Her eye was drawn to the blue-green glow of the central console, raised slightly from her position at the bottom of the ramp, its cooling light seeping into coppery warmth. She could hear the soft humming of machinery beneath her, but it…. It was more than that, somehow. She just couldn't explain it.

She took a step back and bumped into the Doctor. "Whoops," he said, moving her sideways as he eased his way in the door and closed it behind him. He took his coat off and threw it over a fork in one of the coral-like struts, then bounded up the ramp, looking back at her and beaming like a child.

She forced herself to follow him, and when she spied the chair—_pilot's seat_, something in her mind whispered—she immediately sat down.

She'd travelled through time. She knew that wasn't impossible. But she wasn't entirely convinced that this _was_ possible, even if she was seeing it.

The Doctor was still grinning at her, clearly waiting for her to say something.

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out, and after a moment, she closed it again.

The Doctor's grin finally faded. "Don't you like it?" he asked, sounding hurt. "I mean, some people don't like the new design; prefer plain ol' white, like I used to have it, but Sam absolutely loved it, and I would've thought…. Well, I would've thought you could've appreciated it, too."

"No," Alia finally said, "no, it's not that. It's…just that this is…." She trailed off and looked at him. "When are you from?"

The Doctor blinked. "Come again?"

"When are you from?" Alia repeated, still trying to take everything in.

"Oh." The Doctor pulled a face that told her the same thing as his next words. "It's not like you think it is."

"You don't know what I'm thinking," Alia returned. She knew that fear well; she'd had reason to fear, once. But since she'd begun leaping, that connection had begun to weaken. Some things were stronger. They had a better sense of her; she was easier to find. But they couldn't interpret her thoughts like they once had, or at least not as well as they had given the impression that they had. She wondered if it was an effect of the leaping and the fact that so many of her memories were Swiss-cheesed.

"No," the Doctor agreed, "but I think I have a pretty good idea." He paused. "I travel differently than you and Sam, Alia. I'm not limited to my own lifetime, like you are." Another pause. "And…this is my time machine."

Sam would have taken this better than she was, Alia was certain. She couldn't seem to think straight. She tried to go back to the basics. "So when are you from?"

"Everywhen, now," the Doctor answered, a hint of a smile on his face.

"Originally," Alia added, giving him a look. He knew full well what she was asking, and she knew it.

"Doesn't matter now," the Doctor said after a moment. "Doesn't exist."

Alia frowned. "Of course it exists. How can it not exist? It's a time, that's all."

"It was, once," the Doctor allowed, "but now it's not."

Alia raised her eyebrows. "That makes even less sense than the cracks," she said. "You at least tried to explain those."

"That's because the cracks are important," the Doctor countered, "and my past isn't."

Alia snorted. "You're running." She should have seen that before; it was so obvious now.

"Oh, yes," the Doctor agreed quietly. "Haven't stopped in centuries." There was a very short pause, far too short for her to do more than open her mouth to take a crack at that. "But I don't want to stop," he continued, "and, frankly, if things crack, I'll have to. Won't have a choice; there won't be anywhere to go. And, now that we're here, I'm going to do my best to demonstrate that those cracks _would _affect you."

"How?" Alia asked as the Doctor dropped to his knees and started muttering to himself, peering beneath the grating.

"Oh, fairly easily," the Doctor replied, pulling up a section of the flooring and disappearing into the gaping hole. "Just need to adapt it to Sam's little analogy. You know—the string theory."

"Hold on," Alia said. "You're not trying to tell me you just need a bit of string for this, are you?" He couldn't mean that. He had…more things in here than she could name, she was fairly certain. He was from her future, that was certain, but how far, if he didn't need to stay within his own lifetime?

Centuries, he'd said.

The thought was staggering. He'd travelled back _centuries_—

"Well, yes," the Doctor responded slowly, clambering back out. "Bit funny, though. You'd think I'd have a bit of string with me, in one pocket or another, but I'm sure I haven't." He tossed a tangled ball of string in her direction. She leaned over to pick it up while he secured the grating again.

It was knotted and fraying and tangled, and the bits of dust clinging to it had Alia wondering where the Doctor had found it. She was only half listening to him as he went on to explain the string theory—"You do know what it is, don't you, when I say that? Making a loop, rolling it into a ball, different parts touching each other and everything else?"—since she really didn't need an explanation. She was living it, after all. She ought to know it better than anyone, except for perhaps Sam.

"The thing with the cracks," the Doctor continued, plucking the ball of string from her hand and holding up in his other hand a pair of scissors that he'd produced from somewhere, "is that they begin to break things apart. Things won't line up as they used to, and some things won't touch." He made one cut, but the string was too tangled for that to make much of a difference. The only evidence of the cut was the two new ends, each slightly out of their original position. "Things don't line up quite right once the cracks appear," he said, changing the position of the knotted string by rolling it on his hand, "but a crack or two, well, it's not _terribly_ noticeable at first." Then he made two more cuts. "But, it isn't very long before more cracks appear." He made four cuts this time, and a few pieces of string fell away. Alia reached out to grab them, but only caught one. "And then," the Doctor finished softly, "things start to fall apart, and pieces are lost altogether."

Alia looked at the bits of string that lay haphazardly on the grating, then back up at the Doctor. "Has this happened to you before?" she asked. "These cracks. Is your time like one of these pieces of string?" She held up the piece she'd caught. "Cut out of the rest of time?"

"Something like that," the Doctor conceded, putting the scissors down on the console and taking the piece of string from her, "but not because of cracks. But you understand what'll happen now, don't you? I mean it when I say that you'll lose things, entire pieces of history. I can try to stitch the pieces back together," the Doctor said, tying her piece of string back onto the ball in his hand, "but it won't be the same."

"All right," Alia agreed. "I get that, but what does this have to do with me? I'm not _trying_ to cause time to crack. I'm doing my best _not_ to change Grace's future. She's not the reason I'm here."

"But you're still affecting her," the Doctor insisted, as he'd said so many times before. "The path you're on now changes her future. I'm not sure how, exactly. It doesn't have to be a big change. Maybe she still becomes a cardiologist. Maybe she still becomes the best. But if she doesn't _act_ the same way she did when I met her because of something you do now, if she doesn't make the same decisions, the very same choices, then everything will fall apart."

"Right," Alia said, crossing her arms. "If that happens, you two don't get to hold back death. And how is that any different from what she would be trying to do every single day, Doctor?"

The Doctor sighed. "Because of who I am, mostly, and what I was trying to do, and who I was trying to stop. There was…someone else, who was trying to—" The Doctor broke off. "Doesn't matter _precisely_ what he was trying to do. If he had managed it, everything would have been destroyed. He was mad, Alia. You may think you've seen madness, but you haven't, not really. He was mad, but he was brilliant, and he very nearly succeeded. Grace helped me stop him in the end, yes, but she paid with her life to give me mine. But, things were in flux then, more so than normal, and when I got things to begin reversing themselves, her death was reversed, too. She didn't realize, I think, exactly what happened, but we held back death, the two of us, and I don't like to think what would have happened if she hadn't been there."

Alia didn't really know what to say to that. She certainly hadn't been expecting that as an answer. "When was that?"

"New Year's Eve," the Doctor replied. "1999. Don't think it's happened for you yet. Not that you'll know when the time comes anyway, since, if things don't change, you shouldn't ever notice that anything's off."

"Another level," Alia guessed.

"More like a loop on the string," the Doctor said, promptly tying one in. "Things reversed themselves, you see, but it wasn't just the original level reasserting itself. Not precisely. A few too many things had changed for that. Similar, though. That was more rewriting, that time, than overwriting. We ran out of time and had to get back before everything caught up to us. Managed it, of course. I'm quite good at managing things." He hesitated for a moment, then added, "I have managed to convince you, haven't I? About the cracks, and Grace, and everything else? I need the path we're on now to shift, Alia. I need it to shift back to the way things were. That's the only way I'll be able to patch these cracks and keep them sealed."

After a moment, Alia nodded. "Yes," she said. "I'll try what you said, with Andrew, but I can't make any promises. But how can you be so sure that I'm the cause of the cracks?"

"I traced the change here," the Doctor answered. "This is its origin, right here, right now. Well, not right _now_ as in right now this _minute_, but this time, this city, this planet. It—"

"This _planet_?" Alia interrupted, looking incredulous. The room around her started to take on a new meaning. He couldn't _possibly_ mean that—

"Before this," the Doctor told her gently, "I was in 2059. On Mars, for the most part, at the first base you lot managed to establish there. So, yes. Planet. But…." He trailed off, looking pained. "I'd made a mistake there. I tried to change something I couldn't—something I _shouldn't_, really. And, frankly, I'm very lucky that I didn't succeed. But, thing is, that mistake of mine still caused cracks in the timeline. It's not as strong as it used to be, though I did my very best to splice it together the last time I met you, and when I tried to change that fixed point, some things cracked. I saw them, and I managed to patch them up. But then I looked even closer, and I saw more. And I patched those, too. But the trouble, Alia, is that while I was the first one to break that sealant that protected the timeline, that kept the parallels together, I wasn't the only one, and once I'd weakened one spot, it was enough for something else to take hold. I tried to patch those cracks. I kept trying. It doesn't hold. The timeline will split again if this keeps up, Alia. I can't let that happen, and I can't keep patching the cracks forever; something will change, eventually. It won't be quite right. There'll be a knot on the string where there shouldn't be. The only way to stop it is to stop the change from taking place. You're initiating that change, Alia, right here, right now, even if it doesn't become important for a few years yet. You're the source, and I tracked everything back here, back to you. It all depends on you, Alia. You can save the world, the entire universe, or you can condemn it."

Alia raised her eyebrows. "What would you have done if I still hadn't agreed?"

"If I couldn't convince you, I would have tried everything else," the Doctor said. "And I would have kept trying, even as everything started to change, until my timeline caught up with me and I wasn't able to do anything."

"Until your timeline caught up with you?" Alia repeated. "Why, you think you would have died if Grace hadn't been there to help you?"

"It's a bit hard to say," the Doctor replied carefully. "Either I couldn't stop things, or I wasn't there to stop things."

Alia knew he'd be able to read the question in her look, so she didn't bother saying anything. Sure enough, after a moment or two, the Doctor continued, "If I wasn't there to stop things, it probably means that Grace either wasn't called to the hospital that night, or it means that she was, but she didn't do things the same way as I needed her to afterwards." The Doctor paused. "Well, or someone else killed me altogether. Bit hard to say."

"You mean nearly killed you," Alia corrected.

"No," the Doctor returned lightly, "I meant what I said."

"But you're not dead," Alia said incredulously.

"No," the Doctor agreed, "but I did wake up in the morgue, covered with a shroud and wearing a toe tag, so I am rather lucky I didn't stay there. Did give the man on watch a bit of a scare, though."

"But that's not possible!" Alia protested.

"And that," the Doctor said, "is precisely what most of the people here would say about time travel if you asked them, isn't it?" He must've read her expression, because he added, "Don't worry. That's about it for my secrets. Time travel, funny little quirk of my biology that kicks in on occasion, cracks, Grace's future—that about covers it, doesn't it?"

Alia nearly laughed, but it had been so long since she'd laughed—_really_ laughed, not just pretended when the situation called for it—that she wasn't sure if she could anymore. But saying that covered it? That didn't _begin_ to cover it. Every time he answered one of her questions, he said something that made her want to ask ten more.

She knew that wasn't the right answer, though. It wasn't the one he wanted. And she had a feeling that, no matter how often she asked, she wouldn't get all the answers _she_ wanted. He'd avoided answering—or at the very least, fully answering—most of her questions to begin with; no matter how much he pretended that he was being perfectly honest, he wasn't really telling her anything.

No wonder he'd lasted so long at the Project.

Then again, with that attitude, it was a wonder he had lasted at all.

"You'd better check on Grace," Alia said. "I'll go talk to Andrew."

"Do you know what you're going to say?" the Doctor asked.

"No," Alia confessed, "but I'll say whatever I need to say." She paused, then admitted, "I'd like to do something good for once, even if I have to do something bad to make sure that happens."

The Doctor smiled. "Thank you," he said.

Alia gave him a small smile in return. She knew what he was thanking her for—not for her words, but for her understanding. She didn't understand everything entirely, but she understood enough to know what rested on her decision. She knew what she was risking by agreeing with the Doctor, especially if Zoey found out, but she found she was willing to risk it.

She feared what they could do to her, if they managed to drag her out of this leap for punishment, and she knew they'd find a way to make her punishment worse than last time, but the Doctor, like Sam, had reminded her that she didn't always have to think of herself first, and she'd resolved not to, so she would do what the Doctor asked.

She could only hope that it would be enough, that it would work.

And that whatever he did at the Project wouldn't tip them off. If he did…. They'd find a way to stop her if he did.

She didn't think she wanted to know what would happen then.

* * *

><p>AN: Just a quick thanks to everyone who takes the time to review.


	9. Chapter 9

"He doesn't seem to have changed much," Thames commented, glancing away from the audio-video feed of the Holding Chamber to look at Zoey as she entered the Control Room.

"Arrogant as ever, you mean," Zoey observed, a frown on her face. "Yes. But he has changed. He's showing more backbone now than he was before, and I'd rather like to know why."

"You think he was acting the entire time he was here last time?" Thames asked incredulously. "Zoey, your sessions—"

"Proved ineffective, didn't they?" Zoey snapped. "And I'm sure he's convinced that will be the case again." She paused. "He's still acting," she said, "like he was last time, but for a different means. He's letting us see more of the truth this time. He's not so desperate to hide it. Why would that be?"

Thames, personally, had a pretty good idea of why that would be, but he didn't want to tell it to Zoey. But Dr. Smith had bested them once, and even though it wasn't a guarantee that he would manage it again, it stood for something. They'd managed a lot in the years since, but if he'd been watching them, monitoring their progress somehow, he'd know exactly how far they had progressed. He'd definitely have one up on them, then. They still didn't know anything about him.

"He _thinks_," Zoey continued, "that this is all just a game, and that he's already won."

Thames had worked with Zoey long enough to have an idea of where she was going with this. He'd watched her play enough games over the years. "You're going to change the rules on him?"

Zoey smirked. "He doesn't play by the rules," she said bluntly. "It pained him to pretend for as long as he did when he was here last time. No, I don't need to change the rules on him. I don't have to. He's playing the wrong game."

Thames grinned at her. "How long do you think it'll take him to realize that?"

"Oh, I imagine it'll be quite long enough," Zoey replied. "He's not going to have much reason to question what he thinks is right until enough things begin going wrong." She paused. "Get the Imaging Chamber online. I might as well make good on my word and check on Alia."

Thames nodded and did as she asked, checked the connection with the handlink, and locked Zoey onto Alia.

Or rather, he tried.

But Lothos couldn't find her.

"Thames, what's going on?"

Zoey wasn't known around the Project for her patience, not when it came to anything except her skill in drawing out her sessions. She had plenty of patience when it came to that. What people whispered about was her temper, and more than a few of the whisperers had paid dearly for their words, but nothing she—or anyone else, for that matter—did could _stop_ the whispers. She wasn't the only one they whispered about; Thames knew enough things were said about him, too. But the people who were left were getting awfully good at making sure the precise words never reached the ears of the subject in question.

"Lothos can't get a lock," Thames finally replied.

"What do you mean, he can't get a lock?" Zoey snapped.

"I mean," Thames answered, "that he can't find Alia."

"We know where she is, Thames," Zoey pointed out testily. "We know when she is. How can he not find her?"

"That's the point," Thames said. "We know where and when she is, or at least where and when she should be, but she's not showing up in any of our scans. She's gone."

"She can't be _gone_." There was no mistaking the sneer in Zoey's voice. "She hasn't leaped yet."

"We can't get a lock on her," Thames insisted. "Lothos can't trace her. And I'm not getting anything off her chip."

There was silence on Zoey's end for a while, but finally she said, "Lock me onto Andrew Milton."

Thames opened his mouth to ask why even as he moved to comply but realized Zoey's logic before the words came out. Andrew Milton was Alia's assignment. She ought to be with him as much as possible. Even if Alia wasn't with him at that exact moment, she ought to be nearby, or would be soon enough. And it wasn't as if they couldn't keep scanning for Alia while Zoey waited near Andrew. It was just an inconvenience.

It was an inconvenience, however, that Thames wasn't convinced was entirely coincidental.

Alia's other assignment, as Zoey had put it, was Dr. Smith.

If she was with him, maybe whatever was stopping them from finding him was stopping them from finding her.

But, no, that wasn't right; they would have had trouble earlier if simple proximity were the case. Zoey had just missed him before, according to Alia, and they'd caught a glimpse of him earlier, too. It was something else, but Thames would bet it was still related.

"She's not here," Zoey observed. "And there's an empty spot beside Andrew, so if she were here, she would've been in it." A pause. "You're still scanning?"

"Yes. Nothing yet," Thames informed her, knowing her mood was not one where he could get away with a more teasing or curt response. "I'm trying a few things, but nothing's working so far. I'll tell you the moment we can pinpoint her."

"No." Zoey's decision startled Thames, but he wasn't going to argue. "I'll stay here. I'll wait for her. She'll come back. You can go question Dr. Smith and find out how he managed this."

"I'll get on that right now, then," Thames said. "Lothos will alert me if you need anything."

"I won't." The trace of annoyance in Zoey's voice was clear, even over the audio feed. "Just _go_, Thames."

He didn't wait around to be told twice. He headed for the Holding Chamber, checked with the guards at the door, and went inside. It was dimmer than he liked, and he had Lothos turn up the lights. But all that did was confirm a horrible feeling he had.

He could see the leapee, Grace Holloway, lying on the table in the middle of the room.

He couldn't see Dr. Smith.

Anywhere.

"Where are you?" Thames demanded, looking around. "I know you're in here, Dr. Smith. You can't have gotten past the guards. The door hasn't even been opened."

There was no response.

Thames snorted. _Games_. Zoey liked playing, not him. He didn't have time for hide-and-seek, but Dr. Smith wasn't giving him any other choice. Grumbling, Thames began to look for him, checking beneath and behind various bits of equipment, keeping quiet in case he could hear Dr. Smith moving about.

A thorough search turned up nothing.

Thames raised his eyes, scanning the mirrored walls for something that he'd missed, but everything was in its place.

Nothing underfoot, nothing overhead, and the door had only been opened when he'd come in. Dr. Smith _had_ to still be here.

Well, if he was, perhaps the best thing to do to bring him out would be the same thing that had brought him here in the first place. Smirking, Thames moved over to Grace. "Hello, sweetheart," he said. She didn't move; she was still asleep. It was much more fun to torment them when they were awake. He shook her.

She remained asleep.

No tossing or turning or muttering or mumbling, no change in breathing, no flicker of the eyelids betraying a dream.

Well, she didn't _have_ to be awake for this. Thames glanced at the nearby tools, trying to find just the right one to—

"Don't you _dare_."

Thames jumped at the sound of Dr. Smith's voice. Turning around, he saw the man standing between him and the leapee, positively glowering. Thames raised his eyebrows. "One of your tricks?" he asked lightly.

"You could say that," Dr. Smith agreed, keeping his voice low. "But I promised Grace that she wouldn't wake until this was over, and I mean to keep that promise."

That hadn't been what Thames had meant; he'd meant Dr. Smith's earlier disappearing act. The leapee herself wasn't nearly as impressive. He'd been watching, earlier, what Dr. Smith had done. The video hadn't been very clear—it kept crackling into snow or cutting out altogether—but Dr. Smith's comment certainly was. He'd probably drugged her. Well, that was nothing new, especially around here. Thames crossed his arms. "You'll have to do better than that."

"Oh, I already have," Dr. Smith replied. He tucked something into his pocket, but kept his hand around it so that Thames couldn't make out what it was. Whatever it was, it was small. Could be whatever he'd used on the leapee. Or maybe it was that tool he'd had last time, the thing he'd used to operate the doors. That had been small, Thames recalled, but it had been effective, and it stood to reason that he'd have it with him now.

But whatever it was, it wasn't so important that he should focus on that instead of addressing the situation at hand. He had to go carefully. He wasn't as good at this verbal sparring as Zoey, but he knew she'd have his head if he tried an actual attack on the good Dr. Smith and failed. Thames glanced around, weighing the odds of how long he could keep this up before initiating a physical fight he'd probably win against how likely it was that Dr. Smith would make his first move one Thames couldn't counter. "Really?" he asked dryly. "What did you do, then?"

Dr. Smith grinned at him, but it wasn't one of his old grins that he'd worn far too often the last time he'd been here. This grin reminded Thames of Zoey's smug smirks. But then the grin shifted slightly, becoming the bright one he'd worn so frequently in the past. "Oh, and that's not what you've come to ask me about?" Dr. Smith asked lightly. "I would've thought someone would be in here the moment Lothos couldn't get a lock on Alia, and I thought Zoey would send you. What are you here for, then? Tea? No, no, wouldn't be tea; as I recall, you don't much—"

"How'd you fix that with Alia?" Thames interrupted. Sometimes it was best to cut straight to the point, especially with the likes of Dr. Smith.

"Fix what?" Dr. Smith asked innocently. Thames glared at him, and Dr. Smith feigned sudden understanding. "Oh, you mean not being able to get a lock! Right, well, that was simple, really. She just happened to be somewhere you lot couldn't find her. But, I expect she'll turn up soon enough."

"So you tampered with Lothos," Thames concluded. "You—"

"Oh, no," Dr. Smith broke in. "Me? Not me. Well, not recently. If there's been tampering going on, you better check out your staff."

Thames had thought, after the amount of time he'd spent with Dr. Smith last time, that he could figure out most of what he was saying. It was, after all, just a matter of separating the nonsense and the babbling from the truth. And that was difficult enough in itself, but he usually seemed able to manage it, at least for the majority of the time. He'd been getting quite good at it by the end of things, last time.

This, however, seemed more than a bit contradictory.

"Then how the hell did you manage to interfere with our connection with Alia if you haven't been at Lothos?"

That was the trouble. Thames knew when people were lying. He knew the signs, from the facial betrayals to the inflections in the voice, and he had a knack for telling that sort of thing, even when people tried to cover it up. He was an accomplished liar himself, and could probably manage it without anyone here realizing, save Zoey, even with someone monitoring his chip through Lothos. And he'd had more than enough practice telling when someone was fibbing when the fools Alia'd leaped into tried to pull one over him. But Dr. Smith was, at least at this precise moment, telling the truth. Maybe not the _perfect_ truth, but it definitely wasn't an outright lie.

"Well," Dr. Smith said slowly, stuffing his hands into his pockets, "I wouldn't call what I did _tampering_, per se. But just because I didn't touch Lothos—well, not since the last time you caught me at it, at any rate—it doesn't mean I did nothing. That's really quite rare for me, doing nothing. Even when I _intend_ to do nothing, I usually end up doing something."

"So what did you do?" Thames growled.

Dr. Smith pulled a face. "And you think I'll tell you that? Do you really think that I haven't tried that one enough times to know when someone's trying to pull it on me? I mean, I know I talk. I can talk a blue streak if I have to. And I have. And probably will again. But the thing is, when I do that, I always have a very good reason. And, yes, I will admit, sometimes it _is_ nothing more than to buy a bit of time, but I never used to put a price on it. Time, I mean. Not that I really do, not like you lot. But it means more, now, those little moments." He paused. "Those same moments," he continued, "that you try to destroy." He leaned forward a bit, grinning at Thames. "And, I have to ask. Do you think you manage it?"

"What?"

"Do you think you manage it?" Dr. Smith repeated, slowly walking around Thames so that he was standing nearest to the door. "All that destruction you do. Do you think it sticks?"

"Of course it sticks!" Thames retorted. "Once Alia's changed something, it stands."

"Does it?" Dr. Smith asked. "Really, now? I mean, you've already proven that Sam's leaps don't necessarily stick if someone, namely you, interferes with what he's set right. So who's to say that someone else can't interfere with what you've set wrong?"

He knew about Sam. Oh, he'd probably known about that infuriating Dr. Samuel Beckett all along, even before they'd run into him. That was probably why he knew so much about the Project and its technology in general. Except…except that would put Dr. Beckett's project ahead of theirs, and it was clear that they had the superior technology. If Dr. Smith was involved with them, he wouldn't have any reason not to share _their_ technology with Sam Beckett's project, putting them on an even footing.

It still didn't make sense.

Thames was beginning to wonder if it ever would.

"Because you wouldn't know," Dr. Smith continued, "would you, whether or not things have been changed back? The way history rewrites itself, well, all you know is the last revision, so if everything's back to the way it was in the original history—and I mean the _original_ original history—then Alia's leap will have been written out, and all your careful records with it. Now, you could try to use that as an argument that it's _not _happening, because you still have all your records intact, and you can call them up, one by one—but that's the thing. How do you know it's _all_ your records? And just because you can call them up now, what's stopping them from being rewritten later? It might take a while for the effects to seep through, but everything would still come eventually, all those changes, until it caught up with you."

"What's your point?" Thames snapped.

Dr. Smith grinned. "Oh, just that you don't have _nearly_ as much control over everything as you like to think that you do."

"So you're working with Beckett's project, then?" Thames sneered. "Trying to right all our wrongs?"

"You'd like to think that, wouldn't you?" Dr. Smith returned. "Well, no, actually, I'm not. Don't need to. But you already know that, of course. You've found out a bit about the people at Sam's project, though I'm fairly sure it's next to nothing in terms of value, but you haven't found a smidgen more info on me, now have you? No, I'm not affiliated with them any more than I'm affiliated with you. Less so, even, seeing as I helped you lot put the finishing touches on this and didn't need to with Sam's." There was a pause, then, "Sam's righting different wrongs, wrongs that needed to be righted all along. And usually…. Usually, though it _really_ pains me to admit it, you lot are wronging rights for much the same purpose. Not that you _realize_ that, of course. You can't see the end of it all. You just see the first initial outcome, what you think it the main change. You don't ever follow that through, see where it ends up. You never look for the potential you've unleashed."

"We look as far as we need to," Thames shot back.

Dr. Smith raised his eyebrows. "Really? These scheduled leaps of yours—do you know who draws them up? They're all so random, aren't they? Different places, different dates, different people—not a single thing connecting them all. Except you, and the fact that you've changed something. Because that's the key to the pattern, really—and it's a pattern you can't even see because you're such an integral part of it. And you don't _question_ it, not for a moment. Funny, really. Because you're all so sure, each and every one of you, that you're striving towards one thing, but you've only a vague impression of what that is because no one cares enough to let all the underlings know all the details, and you never stop to wonder if you're really heading for what you think you're heading for, or whether you're actually heading for something completely opposite."

Oh, that was it. He was sick and tired of all Dr. Smith's ludicrous implications. He'd given him enough of his time now, and Thames knew well enough from last time that if he listened for long enough, he'd eventually fall for it. Well, he'd smartened up now, and he wasn't falling for it again. Thames's hand reached out and found a knife. It was a good, comfortable weight in his hand. It was insurance, and a good sight sharper than any of Dr. Smith's words, he'd wager.

Dr. Smith did not miss the movement. "I really wouldn't if I were you," he said quietly.

"And why would that be?" Thames challenged.

The hands came out of the pockets now, and one of them held that curious, multipurpose little tool of his, this time unconcealed by the palm of the hand. "Because you might be quick, and you might be skilled, and you might be used to fighting," Dr. Smith began cautiously, slowly pointing his tool towards the ceiling as Thames adjusted his grip on the knife, "but you're as blind in the dark as the next person." There was a buzzing and a brief pulsing of blue light from the tip of Dr. Smith's tool, and then both died with the lights.

Thames lunged, but Dr. Smith had already moved, and he spun around, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Trouble was, they didn't. With the lights out in the Holding Chamber, it was as dark as a cave, a mine—appropriately, about as dark as a hole in the ground that never saw the light of day, just as they'd intended. There was no sign of the lights out in the corridor, not so much as an outline of the door. They'd planned that.

They hadn't expected the disorientation to be used against them.

No matter. He knew the layout of the room as well as the back of his hand, and he had to know it better than Dr. Smith. Most of the time _he'd_ spent here had been strapped to one or another of their many select pieces of equipment. He might be able to move about slowly enough to avoid making any noise, but he'd be bound to bump into something sooner or later.

And while he was waiting for Dr. Smith to make that particular blunder, he could always make sure he hit a nerve and encourage the man to make it all the sooner. He headed back to the centre of the room, to the table upon which their lovely leapee lay.

Thames reached it, casting his hands out to grab a limb, but came up with nothing.

Dr. Smith had _moved_ her.

Already.

He was still at least a step ahead of them.

Thames threw the knife down. The clatter it made sounded extraordinarily loud in the silence of the room. He knew Lothos couldn't adjust the lights—he'd already asked, and now figured that it was probably more tampering of Dr. Smith's, whether he admitted it or not, though how he could manage such selectivity was beyond Thames—but the door had worked when he'd come in, and he could see no reason for Dr. Smith to disable his only exit. Predictably, he hadn't. The blinding light from the open door chased away some of the darkness, but Thames still couldn't spot either Dr. Smith or the leapee.

Didn't matter. They weren't his to play with. He was just supposed to keep them trapped, taking care of them and keeping them running until cat got back.

He wanted blood. He'd wanted it since Dr. Smith had made his escape the first time. But it wasn't his decision, and he couldn't step out of place. He wasn't even sure it was _Zoey's_ decision, though he didn't doubt that she agreed with him, based on her earlier comments. The trouble was, Dr. Smith was right. Someone else was calling the shots, and he didn't know who it was. It had been years, but he'd never been told. He wasn't entirely sure Zoey knew, either.

The worst part was, it meant Dr. Smith had more safety than Thames would like. He wasn't one of the usual workers, not by a long shot. He was unique. He was valuable. He had information. They couldn't just kill him.

At least, not without orders, or the go-ahead from the top.

And as Dr. Smith had so cheerfully reminded him, he didn't know who was _at_ the top.

Which meant that though blood may spill, it wouldn't necessarily be Dr. Smith's.

* * *

><p>AN: Nice theory of the Doctor's, isn't it? Anything to confuse them is an advantage to him…. Incidentally, I was counting on the use of the TARDIS key as a perception filter in the first bit when Thames couldn't spot him. Also, many thanks to those who review.


	10. Chapter 10

Alia figured Andrew's class ought to be over by now, but it was hard to say. She hadn't found it easy to keep track of time when she was in the Doctor's time machine. It had felt…strange. Different. She couldn't put her finger on it. She'd been amazed to see it, and rather happy that he'd finally shown her, since it had explained a little even if it had unleashed a flood more questions, but in truth, she was just as glad to leave it. She wasn't sure why. It just…. It felt…funny. Strange. It unnerved her.

She was back on campus now, slowly walking towards the building she _thought _Andrew had been going to, before, and hoping to catch sight of him on the way out.

He wasn't the one she spotted.

That stood to reason, really. He wore the same sorts of colours—dull, mostly—and was about the same height as every other average male on the campus. In short, he blended in with everyone else.

Zoey, in the current dress of multicoloured swirls and large, gaudy earrings, did not.

Zoey hadn't seen her yet; she wasn't looking her way. Well, she wasn't glaring at her, and Alia knew she would be in for it the moment she was spotted. Zoey had been waiting for her, trailing Andrew, because they knew that she would have to go back to him. And she was, just now, for the same reason: to complete her assignment so that she could leap.

It was the means by which she was going to attempt it, based on the Doctor's suggestion, that she was considerably less confident about when it came to their approval.

The Doctor hadn't said anything to her about things changing once she'd made the decision to help him, and she was fairly certain he would've told her the moment the cracks stopped. Or changed, or receded, or whatever they did. But the way he had been talking had had her believing that, so long as she was on the right path, everything would be fine, which meant, at least to her, that all the trouble with the cracks would be over and done with.

But apparently, it wasn't.

And she wasn't sure whether that meant she wouldn't succeed, that something else had interfered, or that it just couldn't be changed. For all she knew, things were too far gone, and the damage was done, as permanent as it could get in the face of all the time travellers who tried to change it.

Or maybe she'd just misunderstood. That wasn't hard to believe. Maybe it took a while for things to catch up, for the cracks to start disappearing.

But that made her wonder whether they could just disappear. A crack was a crack. They didn't vanish on their own. The Doctor would need to seal them still. And if he hadn't, that would be why they still existed.

Even if it were simpler than that, as simple as the change in the mode of action meaning that the cracks had never been there to begin with, the Doctor should still have mentioned it. He could see more than one level, after all.

Of course, if she set things in motion to be rewritten, then wouldn't it mean that she shouldn't remember it all?

Or did circumstances make her an exception to it all this time, allowing her to recall things from more than just the surface level? It wasn't that way when she leaped. She couldn't remember the original history once she'd changed it; she needed Zoey to tell her what it had been. Running into another time traveller shouldn't change that; things hadn't been that different with Sam.

Alia groaned. This was too much of a headache for her to work out. And she didn't have time, anyway. Zoey had noticed her. Alia couldn't miss that look if she tried. Especially now that Zoey had moved so that she was hardly three feet in front of her.

Alia stopped, moved to pretend to check something in her book bag, and realized that she no longer had it.

She'd given it to the Doctor. Or rather, he'd taken it after he'd tired of her complaining, and hadn't thought to return it any more than she'd thought to retrieve it.

She settled for stretching and wandering off the main path towards a tree and hoping that if Andrew thought to join her, he'd have the good sense to realize that she was distracted and keep his mouth shut before he went and blabbed everything where Zoey could hear it. She didn't have any excuse for his knowledge about her leap, let alone a good one. And she still wasn't entirely convinced that she could leap with him _knowing_, but it was too late to change that now.

"And where were you?" Zoey asked, her expression saying that Alia had better have a good explanation.

"With Dr. Smith," Alia answered, watching Andrew stop as he spotted her. "At the park. Trying to get the information you wanted."

"Where in the park?" Zoey asked sharply.

Alia shrugged. "South end somewhere. I'm not sure. It wasn't anywhere in particular. We were just walking. We did leave the path after a while, though, but I didn't see anything besides trees." Not at first, anyway.

"I don't think you fully understand the situation, Alia, dear," Zoey said, her tone telling Alia quite clearly that Zoey knew she was keeping something back, even if she wasn't sure what.

"I'm not going to endanger my assignment with Andrew for some extraneous information," Alia answered quietly. "I don't want to be stuck here. The Doctor used the time to talk, that's all."

"So he insists on being called by that pretentious title even now?" Zoey drawled.

Alia nodded, and allowed herself a small smile. "You saw how he was at the Project. He wouldn't have kept insisting on it quite so convincingly if it were just a title he'd adopted recently. I may not remember much, but I've had some time to think things over, and I remember that." Andrew still hadn't made any move towards her, and she hoped that meant he wasn't going to. She was going to have enough trouble trying to pull this off without carrying on a double-sided conversation. The last one hadn't turned out so well. "Dr. Smith is trying to figure out the details of some sort of experiment. I don't understand what it is, so don't ask me to explain it. I don't think he really wanted Grace specifically, anyway. It doesn't seem as if he really needs help with anything. I think he just wanted someone to talk to. Well, someone to talk _at_. But nothing he said made a whit of sense."

"What do you remember?"

Alia shrugged. "It went over my head. He might as well have been talking Greek for all I could understand." Zoey's glare didn't relent, and Alia added, "He said something about quarks and something else about…quantum displacement? No, that wasn't it. Entanglement, maybe. I don't know. It didn't make sense."

"It might make more sense than you know," Zoey murmured, punching something into the handlink.

"Well, if you can make anything of it, great, but that's really all I can remember." Well, it was all she could remember from the last book on quantum theory she'd cracked, and that was more than a few leaps ago, and she'd only read a few questions off before she and what's-his-name had started things that had absolutely nothing to do with quantum theory.

Andrew finally made up his mind and joined her under the tree. "I missed you in class," he said.

Alia felt relieved that he didn't start with anything besides that. Calling her by name would've given the game away instantly, and if he'd asked about the Doctor, Zoey might have gotten suspicious. And it was an implied question that she could answer, much better than the one she'd been anticipating—namely, regarding the whereabouts of her books. Perhaps he'd realized that she was talking to Zoey as opposed to just playing it safe. He had watched her for a time. She'd tried to be obvious about it without being _too_ obvious, because as much as she'd needed him to pick up on that point, she didn't need _other _people thinking she was talking to herself. She got enough odd looks as it was, no matter what leap she was on.

"I ran into an old friend," Alia explained, shrugging apologetically. "We ended up talking for longer than I'd expected." She paused, then asked, "Can I borrow your notes?"

Andrew blinked, as if he hadn't anticipated that particular response, as if he hadn't intended her to interpret that question as regarding her whereabouts, but rather only a sentiment to be taken at face value, but then he caught himself and nodded. "Sure. Want them now?"

"Later on, thanks. I left my bag in my locker."

"You have a locker?" Andrew asked, and then he looked horrified, realizing that that hadn't been the right response.

Alia closed her eyes, but she knew Zoey would have noticed that look, and it wasn't hard to interpret. "Got one last week, remember?" she asked lightly.

It didn't work. "Alia, darling," Zoey said, "your new friend is a simply _horrendous_ actor." She scrutinized him for a moment, during which time Andrew made some mumbled response that Alia didn't really pay any mind, and then pronounced, "You slipped up, didn't you?" To say she sounded unhappy would have been an understatement. "You couldn't handle your assignment. How much does he know?" She gestured at Andrew.

"Enough," Alia answered dully. "But Dr. Smith doesn't, and I thought that was more important."

Andrew clearly had no idea what to make of that. "Grace?" he ventured.

Alia glanced at him. "Don't bother," she said, and turned back to Zoey. "Look, it's not everything. I haven't blown the entire game. I can still work this out. I have before."

"You'd _better_." Zoey punched something into the handlink. "Since Andrew knows you're not Grace, Lothos gives you a 43.6 percent chance of pulling this off." She sniffed. "Better odds than I'd expected."

They were better than Alia had expected, too, even if they clearly weren't great. "It'll be fine," said Alia. "I'm working on this now. I'll get it."

Zoey looked her up and down, as if judging her strength of character. "The consequences of a second failed assignment won't be pleasant, Alia. Don't delude yourself. You only have the one shot at this. If Andrew gets at all suspicious of you, you're going to be stuck here unless we can pull you out, and if we can, Alia, you're going to wish we'd left you to rot."

"I'm not going to fail," Alia answered evenly.

"Fail?" Andrew asked.

Alia looked over at him. "Next test coming up. Grace is supposed to pass."

"That's why you're here?" Andrew asked, looking surprised now. "But I thought the Doctor said it probably had something to do with me."

Alia groaned. Zoey's eyebrows shot up. "The _Doctor_?" she repeated. "Andrew Milton knows about Dr. Smith? And _he_ knows about _you_, and what you're here to do?"

Alia closed her eyes, only half listening as Zoey began her rant. She was in trouble now. So was the Doctor, for that matter. At least they couldn't punish her until they gained control over her again, until she leaped out. That didn't mean her punishment, when it came, would be any less. Deliberately withholding information, lying—knowing that those charges were true, it wouldn't take them long to put two and two together and figure out that she had opened her mouth, too. What mattered was how long it took them to realize that she hadn't had to say much of anything, that the Doctor had known almost all of it already.

They had to have realized that the Doctor wasn't just an ordinary person. Alia figured they'd just believed that he was an eccentric scientist with _very_ good connections and a knack for discovering things or putting them together. As unlikely as it would seem, however, she wasn't about to put it past them not to make the leap from 'eccentric scientist' to 'time traveller'. When she thought about it, the Doctor tended to make an awful lot of comments hinting at that. If the possibility even crossed their minds, they'd probably pick up on the next comment he made, and then they'd be bound to wonder.

All they had on him, if she recalled correctly, was an entry that they weren't even convinced was _about_ him. It was just some report from 1969 regarding someone who looked like him. Except now he'd turned up, out of the blue, in 1987, looking absolutely no different from when they'd encountered him roughly a decade later, and the leapee was already claiming no knowledge of him when he clearly knew her, and—

It would explain so many things about him, knowing that he was a time traveller from their future. How he knew so much about them and they so little about him. The technology he had and the obvious improvements over their own. The occasional derogatory remark she wasn't entirely sure he was aware of making, or at very least of how rude it was—'your lot', he'd said, so many times, in reference to them: the people of the late 20th century whose knowledge of time was pitiful compared to his own. He knew so much, and not just about time. There was the technology that had evolved over the years and the history of that evolution and the people who created it. They had established a base on Mars by 2059, and he'd said that just in passing, by way of explanation, as if it were commonplace to him, the idea of living on other planets.

She'd spent so much time remaining unconvinced, trying to stick with what she knew, unwilling to breach the unknown and accept its consequences because of her fear of what she _did_ know as much as her fear of what she didn't. She knew, or at least had a very good idea of, what would happen once Zoey and everyone else at the Project realized who the Doctor was and what he was up to and what he wanted her to do. That was the main reason she had resisted. But once the Doctor had shown her, quite clearly, what would happen if she continued, she couldn't deny that the initially unknown consequences would be worse. Her heart hadn't been in her angry words earlier; she'd been angry at him for knowingly cursing her to this life, yes, but she really didn't wish her anger on the rest of the world. There were a few choice people at the Project, true, but there were so many other people, people who didn't know anything of it, or people like Sam, who did their best to help. Not that they could. No one who wanted to help her could. The Doctor, as far as she knew, was her only hope for real freedom, and he wouldn't give it to her.

From what she understood, that elusive 'choice' he'd been talking about, the one that promised her her freedom, didn't include this. He hadn't expected this to happen. Her decision to help him, however belatedly it had come, didn't count as that choice she would have to make to take her chance at freedom. That was still in her future.

Providing she _had_ a future after this.

She'd wished so many times that it would end, but as often as she had dreamed of escape from the Project, however that escape came, she had never truly wished for death; even if she gave that impression, it wasn't really what she wanted, and it never had been. The thought of not having a future terrified her. She longed for an end that would see her home at last.

No, not home. She didn't have a home, a real one—or at least, not anymore. She longed for her own time, yes, but she'd sacrifice that if she had to. The Doctor had been right, earlier. She did wish for freedom, and freedom alone.

Alia opened her eyes again, determined to weather any look Zoey sent her way. She needed to secure her future to secure her freedom, and she wasn't about to endanger either of those now. "If you want to know how much the Doctor knows," Alia finally said, interrupting Zoey, "then ask him. I'm sure he has a good memory."

Zoey's expression darkened at her outburst, but she merely pursed her lips and, after a moment, nodded. "I'm sure he does," she agreed, "but it would be much better for him if he didn't." Without giving Alia a chance to challenge that, she opened the door to the Imaging Chamber and left.

Alia turned back to Andrew, who was staring at her, the questions evident in his face. She couldn't answer them, not now. She had to explain too many other things, and she wasn't sure where to begin. She wasn't even entirely sure how much he knew—she hadn't known, for instance, that the Doctor had told him anything about her assignment. He'd certainly never given her that impression. Not that he would want to, being so busy trying to convince her about the cracks….

But her assignment was the cause of the cracks, and she had been told of only one way to fix it all and make everything right again by tearing the appropriate pieces apart. Alia smiled at Andrew, then reached out to take his hand, saying, "Let's find somewhere we can talk."

* * *

><p>The Doctor had hidden Grace under the table in the centre of the Holding Chamber. Not the best place, granted, but he couldn't take her out of the room. Alia wouldn't leap if he did. Well, not unless he fixed a whole slew of other variables to allow for that. And it was better if he didn't. He'd have to switch things back to make sure he didn't damage anything, and anyway, it would take a lot of explaining that he didn't care to do at the moment.<p>

He had other things to worry about, like the cracks.

The cracks that were still refusing to remain sealed.

And he ought to know that; he'd tried to fill them in twice now since he'd left Alia. Once in the TARDIS, and once before Thames had come in, after he'd fixed up the perception filter with the TARDIS key to make sure they didn't catch him at it. Or worse, try to bring him _out_ of it before he was ready. That…wouldn't be good. Not that they would know what they were doing. Well, if they knew what they were doing, they'd probably do it anyway. For good measure, to be on the safe side. Just because they could.

He was wearing the perception filter again now. He'd slipped it on again shortly after he'd tucked Grace safely away under the table and consequently had put it to good use when Thames had given up his search and decided to lock him in the Holding Chamber. Hadn't worked, of course. He'd known Thames wouldn't stay in there forever, particularly after he'd frazzled the circuits with the sonic screwdriver so that the lights wouldn't work, and it had been a piece of cake to follow him out the door when he left.

Guards were guards, yes. But these ones had seemed more susceptible to the perception filter than others he'd met in the past. As if they'd _wanted_ to overlook it all, to not see it, to ignore it, to let it pass them by.

Then again, considering their circumstances, he didn't particularly blame them. Not for that. Other things, yes. Their choices were their own, and these were their consequences, especially when they made no move to change them. Making no attempt to alter their current circumstances and instead just accepting them, well, he could find fault with that as easily as they could find fault with him for doing that or doing the opposite, depending on the case. But he didn't blame them for being sickened by the things that went on here, the things that made them wish they could turn a blind eye to it. He blamed them for giving in and actually ignoring it and letting it happen.

He'd seen this…this pattern repeated over and over in so many different places, across so many different times, in all sorts of worlds…. But it was always stronger, it seemed, wherever humans were. He wouldn't lay blame here, calling it guilt by association, not prematurely, before he'd looked into things, since for all he knew, it was just because he always seemed to _find_ all the faults in the humans, wherever they were, but sometimes…. Sometimes he wished their moments of brilliance weren't so often associated with the wrong sort of brilliance, the sort that cast darkness instead of chasing it away.

This wasn't the worst of it. He knew that. And there was Sam's project, Quantum Leap, the perfect counter. But it still hurt to see things this way, and to know that he had to leave it.

What he'd told Thames earlier hadn't been a lie, exactly. This _was_ all part of a pattern. Some patterns were just…less pleasant than others. And he knew that. This wasn't the first time he'd had a hand in some of those patterns. It wasn't even the first time that he couldn't see it all clearly. But that wasn't the trouble.

The trouble was that the pattern, as it lay now, was fractured.

The break in the pattern that was causing the cracks was caused by the cracks themselves.

He hadn't realized that until his last excursion. If he'd known earlier, he probably would have trod more carefully. Too many attempts to patch the same place, the same crack, would change something. He knew that, all too well, and he knew its importance, but he hadn't explained that to Alia very well. He just…. He wasn't sure if she would understand him when he said that time could scar; it had taken him long enough to convince her that it could crack. But that's what would happen, what _did_ happen, if something was patched one too many times. It didn't heal up properly, and it was different afterwards. If a scar was especially minor, then there was the teeniest, tiniest chance that it would, eventually, after _ages_—and he _meant_ ages—begin to diminish, and with a bit of coaxing and gentle care, could even disappear altogether. But usually by then, the damage was already done.

One change leads to another. Dominoes, he'd told Alia. Small things. Really small things, all of them, playing off one another, one thing leading to the next. They were all things that didn't matter or didn't seem to. But under the right set of circumstances, a small thing could be very important. Maybe it was a change, a substitution of sorts, or maybe it was an addition, or maybe it was a lack. For want of a nail….

Didn't matter. He couldn't change what he'd already done. He wouldn't, actually, even if he could. He _had_ trod carefully. He'd known the risks, after all, and he wasn't about to toe the line again quite so soon for fear of crossing it before he realized it. Oh, Donna had been right. She had been so, so right. He needed someone. He needed someone to stop him. But he couldn't; he couldn't put anyone at risk. He couldn't lose anyone else.

Things were ending for him anyway. He knew that. He'd accepted it. Well, almost. Well, nearly. Well, not quite, but….

Now was not the time to change things. He knew _that_ with confidence, at least. And it wasn't as if he was trying to convince himself of something that he knew wasn't true—at least, not in the case of how he'd dealt with the cracks thus far. Even if he _had_ realized that they were the cause of the break in the pattern, he wouldn't have gone about things differently. Well, not much. Not to the extent that what he was doing here and now would be different. Not to the extent that the outcomes, to this point, would be changed.

The fractured pattern was still playing out the same, following the same lines.

The problem was that it was fractured at all.

He knew it was a pattern, yes. But the fracture meant that he couldn't see the whole picture, and that meant he wasn't entirely sure what it was leading to. He wasn't convinced that what he'd said to Thames was wrong, exactly. He just wasn't certain that it was right.

He could hope.

Hope was all he had.

He remembered the days that he had scorned it, even cursed it, but he had never been brave enough to completely relinquish his hold on it, not even then. He'd been terrified, so he'd clung to it all the tighter. He'd hated himself for living, for having the gall to live, to survive in the face of everything that had been lost forever and should remain lost and out of reach, and at first he'd taken it as a punishment. Not for very long, in the long scheme of things. But he'd had his moments, oh, yes.

He still had them.

Sometimes.

On very rare occasions.

Even recently. In light of recent events. Well, recent decisions. Poor recent decisions, on his part. If he hadn't been stopped— No, that wasn't right. If he hadn't been _corrected_….

He'd fixed those cracks. Those ones had stayed sealed. Well, _had_ might be the operative word at the moment. He'd been too concerned about the other cracks to check on those ones. Fresh as they were, things may not have set properly before everything else started changing. They'd be vulnerable to change, to disruption.

If something had _shifted_….

The Doctor stopped, sickened by the feeling that washed over him. If something _had_ shifted, and he hadn't noticed because he'd been too caught up in other things, then perhaps he was going about this all wrong.

Maybe Alia was just the starting point after all.

Maybe it didn't end with her.

Maybe it ended with _him_.

If that were the case, then even if she _did_ do what he'd told her to, even if it _did_ work, and Andrew listened, and Grace was unaffected, and his past and her future were secure….

It would stand for something, but it wouldn't be enough, not alone.

They were just small things now, though. Only peripheral changes. He'd've noticed straight off otherwise. Bit hard to hide, a timeline that should never exist trying to assert—well, in this case, _re_assert—itself. If he worked quickly—and he _meant_ quickly—then he _should_ still be able to pull this off.

His talent for lying in this regeneration was spotty. Sometimes he was absolute rubbish at it. But other times, well, other times he could spin a tale so well that it fooled everyone.

Everyone except himself.

He always knew when he was lying to himself.

And that was as much trouble as anything.

* * *

><p>AN: All right, this was my last chapter of dodging the conversation between Alia and Andrew. It's just not the last chapter of slowing making things worse for the Doctor, because that's far more fun.


	11. Chapter 11

"I said something I shouldn't have, didn't I?" Andrew asked eventually. Grace—_Alia_—had just been pulling him along in silence. He wasn't sure where they were going. He wasn't even sure if _she_ knew where they were going. He knew better than to ask that, though. She wouldn't answer that one. He just hoped she would answer this one. He knew he had, but he didn't know what he'd said—the bit about the locker, perhaps, or maybe what Alia was here to do. It hadn't been too long after that that things had gone downhill.

Not that he had any idea how bad things really were; all he'd had to judge by was Alia's expression. By the end of things, it hadn't been particularly pleasant. Then again, it wasn't especially pleasant to have complete, undeniable proof that this wasn't just some elaborate joke. She really _had_ been talking to someone who wasn't there. And, as far as he could tell, it hadn't been the first time. He remembered how distracted she'd acted throughout their conversation after leaving the library and how sometimes her responses hadn't made sense. It all made sense now; her responses hadn't been to his comments.

"Yes," Alia answered at length. He waited, hoping she'd continue, and after a time, she did. "It doesn't really matter, though. Zoey would have figured it out eventually anyway. I don't think the Doctor's really trying to hide the fact anymore. He let me know, after all." She paused. "How much did he tell you, exactly?"

"Not a lot," Andrew said. "Just that you were a time traveller, here to change something, probably something to do with me, and that Grace is in the future. In 1999. And that she's not, well…."

"I know he told you all about me," Alia cut in sharply. "What did he tell you about himself?"

The question caught Andrew by surprise. "That he's the Doctor."

"And that's it, is it?" Alia asked, frowning. "All about me and nothing about him. Typical."

"Well, he's a time traveller like you, too," Andrew said. "He did tell me that."

Alia stopped and looked at him. "Did he tell you or did you guess?" She didn't wait for the response. "I'll tell you what he _didn't_ tell you. It took me long enough to get it out of him." She glanced around. They were on one of the lesser-used paths between buildings, and no one else was nearby. Satisfied, she continued, "The Doctor was right. I'm here for you."

"He also said I shouldn't listen to you," Andrew pointed out.

Alia pulled a face. "Look, I'm being honest for once, all right? And that was probably before he talked to me. If you asked him again, he'd probably tell you that you had to listen to me. So just hear me out, all right?"

Andrew just looked at her. "What are you here to do?"

"I've got to talk to you," came the reply.

"We _are_ talking."

"About your future," Alia snapped. She shook her head then. "Sorry," she muttered. "I don't usually go about things this way. This seems…harder. The thing is, Andrew…. You can't keep doing what you're doing. It's not supposed to work like that. Me, what I do—I'm trying to fix something. Right now, that involves correcting the course you're on. You can't be a doctor."

"Why not? What happens in my future?"

"I can't say too much," Alia said. "I just…. You're going to have to trust me. This isn't the right path for you. You have to find the real one. I'll help you. We'll figure out what else you can do."

"But I want to do this."

"You can't."

"The Doctor said I could," Andrew said. "He said it didn't matter what I did."

"He was wrong," Alia retorted. "He doesn't know everything, even if he acts like it." She stopped for a moment. "Just…think about it, will you? Right now. Just think. Have you taken the time to think about all of this or have you just been too busy to stop and give yourself the time to think it through? I know you've put a lot of work into this already, but is it really who you are? Is this really what you're supposed to do for the rest of your life? Can you put the rest of your dreams aside and pursue this one?"

"But I've always wanted to do this," Andrew countered. "That's why I'm doing it now."

Alia snorted. "Yeah, right. You can't tell me you never imagined, even for a moment, that you could be something else. Didn't you ever want to be a vet or an actor or an astronaut or a writer or a lawyer or—"

"I thought I wanted to be a teacher once," Andrew cut in. Alia raised her eyebrows, and he amended, "I had wanted to be a teacher. I just…. I never really thought it through, I guess. All I ever did was explain things to my friends when they didn't understand it. I liked doing that. If I could explain it to them, it meant that I understood the material myself. It was…. It felt good when they finally got it. That's why I thought I could teach."

"So why didn't you?"

It was a reasonable question and a simple one at that, but Andrew found it difficult to answer. He'd been a bright kid. He'd had the marks for med school, and his father, also a doctor, had been so proud when he'd said that that's what he would be doing. He was the oldest of three and the only one who had ever shown interest in medicine, but now…. It was hard to say, now, how much of that interest had been his own and how much of it was a result of expectations. There had always been expectations; they'd been silent, unspoken, but they'd always been there. He was supposed to follow in his father's footsteps. It was expected of him, and he didn't balk at any of that because part of him was genuinely interested in this sort of work. He hadn't been forced into anything. It wasn't like that. He really did like medicine. He found it fascinating.

He had imagined, once, that he might like teaching just as much, but then he'd devoted himself to his studies and hadn't given it a second thought—until Alia had brought it up.

She was still waiting for an answer, and he finally gave it to her. She looked unimpressed. "You make it sound like you were pushed into this," she said shortly. "No matter how much you say you enjoy it." She crossed her arms and fixed him with a pointed stare. "So why not follow your dreams? Why do this instead of that? It's not like teaching is an impossible dream. Seems fairly easy to achieve to me."

"Was this your dream, then? Travelling in time?"

Alia frowned at him. "We're not discussing me; we're discussing you."

Andrew shrugged. "You asked me. Why can't I ask you?"

Alia pursed her lips and, after a moment or two of internal debate, acquiesced to give him an answer. "I never knew what I really wanted to do. I never figured that out. I didn't have a lot of opportunities. When I was offered this one, I took it."

"You sound bitter," Andrew observed hesitantly, confused by her tone.

"I can't go home. I'm stuck, leaping about in time without rest. These days, if I have the luxury to dream, all I dream about is being free of this. I'm tired of it." Alia let him think on that for a moment, and then she said, "But you're not in the same boat as me. You can change things. If you have the chance to live your dream, Andrew, why won't you take it? You don't have to let someone else's expectations hold you back. If anyone you care about is worth their salt, they'll understand you taking your own path."

"It's not that easy," protested Andrew.

Alia smirked. "Actually, it is. You're just making it a lot harder for yourself. Don't settle for doing something you _like_, Andrew. Do something you _love_. That's what matters."

Andrew smiled at her. "So is this what you do, then? Change things for the better? Help people realize their dreams?"

Alia looked surprised by his words. "Not exactly," she said. "That description fits a friend of mine better than me. I just change things that have to be changed."

"Well, thanks. For the help." Andrew paused, then asked, "But if that's why you came here, and now you're done, when do you leave?"

"Oh, that's always the question, isn't it?" Alia glanced around again as if searching for an answer. "Usually, right about now. But these aren't usual circumstances." She sighed. "Don't worry. I'll be out of your hair soon enough, and Grace will come back. She can help you through the rest of this." She frowned and mumbled, "I hope the Doctor hasn't messed this leap up. That'd be just my luck."

"Where's he?"

"Checking on Grace," Alia answered. "And doing who knows what else."

"So he can control his time travelling? Not like you? He's not stuck?"

"Not as far as I know."

"So can't you ask him to help you?"

Alia bristled at that, and Andrew didn't understand why until he heard her response: "I did. He refused."

"But—"

"I don't think it works like that," Alia said flatly. "There's some choice I'm supposed make in my future that'll either secure my freedom or curse me to this for the rest of my life, from the sounds of it, and he has to leave me here to make that choice."

"Why?"

"He's not like me," came the short reply. "He doesn't change things. He makes sure they keep the same. I don't understand it, so don't ask me to explain."

"You're angry," Andrew commented.

"Hard not to be. In the interest of preservation, he cursed me to this life of leaping, and he refuses to help me out of it. I know it shouldn't bother me so much, but it does."

"Maybe you just have to forgive him."

"It's not that easy."

"Actually, it is. You're just making it a lot harder for yourself." He got a punch on the arm for that and grinned at her. "What? Didn't it ever occur to you to take your own advice?"

"This is different."

"Not much. Not enough to matter."

Alia glared at him. "It's different. Trust me."

"Forgiving someone is hardly as drastic as deciding to take a completely different career path," Andrew countered, "and both should result in a better life, so I'd say you have the easier option if that's all it's going to take to make things better for you." She refused to look at him, let alone answer him, so he pressed a bit harder. "I mean it. You gave me some advice to make my life better. Why can't I return the favour?" There was still no response. "Just promise me you'll at least think about it."

"Fine," Alia said. "I'll think about it. But let's go see if we can figure out what you need to do to change things around in your life, all right?"

Andrew laughed. "What, you're worried I'm going to get cold feet and change my mind?"

"A bit, yeah," Alia admitted. She smiled at him. "I just want to make sure you take this path. That's why I'm here."

There was something else that she wasn't saying, Andrew knew, but for the life of him, he couldn't figure out what that was. It didn't matter, though, did it, in the end? Things would be better for him with this change. She'd come from the future to make sure of that. It had to work out. She had to be right; she was still here because he hadn't committed himself beyond his words with her. She needed to make sure he made this change in his life, and then she'd leave, travelling on, and Grace would come back, and things would be back to normal.

If this was the only thing Alia was here to change, then the Doctor clearly worried himself over nothing. He'd seemed so concerned about Alia's actions, but Andrew couldn't find fault with them. She was just trying to help. Then again, if the Doctor tried to keep things from changing and Alia changed them, perhaps it wasn't such a surprise that he'd been so concerned. It was strange, though, some of the things the Doctor had said. For someone so set on preservation, he'd made it pretty clear that _his_ future, unlike Grace's, could change without any terrible consequences. There was probably something else, then, something that neither of them was telling him. No matter; whatever it was probably wouldn't affect him, anyway. As the Doctor had said, he wasn't important, not really; he was free to enjoy his life however he liked. It was rather comforting, that freedom. It gave him the assurance that the future held endless possibilities. He could choose whatever path he wanted or forge one of his own, and right now he was happy to do exactly that.

* * *

><p>The damage, the Doctor decided, wasn't as bad at this point as it could have been. None of the terribly important differences between the two timelines had changed. There had only been a few small things, some positive, some negative, and the balance was still being maintained. The greatest change was the one he had wrought himself: saving Mia and Yuri. That Adelaide's death had been on Earth instead of Mars was unimportant; the location was a flexible, interchangeable point, quite unlike her death itself, the fixation of which he had wrongly tried to ignore, thereby setting the stage for this entire mess.<p>

He needed Alia to succeed and to leap out. As long as she was still there, things could still change. Setting things on the right path was no guarantee that they would stay there—even Sam had learned that the first time he'd run into Alia. Trouble was, if Alia leaped out in circumstances that satisfied the terms of her assignment but violated the conditions he needed to be set, he'd have to go back and try to change things himself. That would not be easy; he was already a part of events.

That knowledge hadn't stopped him before, but things hadn't always turned out for the better then, either.

In the meantime, he'd patched those few cracks again, even in the knowledge that it wouldn't last. He hadn't patched those ones too often yet, and he needed things to hold as they were for as long as possible.

He'd intended to have another go at Lothos to see if he could figure out who was really behind this Project but caught himself at the Imaging Chamber door. Zoey wasn't exactly keeping her voice down, and it was all too easy for the Doctor to hear her scathing words. He winced. Alia and Zoey's relationship was nothing like Sam and Al's, and that could hardly be clearer at the moment.

Perhaps he ought to talk to Alia. If he told her what to look for, she might notice a few changes back in 1987 that he'd missed. Not that he was entirely sure what to look for. He could identify something odd the moment he saw it; the trouble was identifying it _before_ he saw it. Andrew might be able to help in that respect. If he and Alia kept their eyes peeled for something unexpected—

But would that even really work? Would they be able to pick something out? Ordinarily, no, he wouldn't even consider it, but this was different, given the nature of the cracks. Alia had a different perspective on things, but even her memory of events was modified once a change was made, at least as far as he could tell. Part of that was due to the Swiss cheese effect and the other part because of the primitiveness of her travel technique, but the potential for memory retention—at least, the weaker sort that his companions enjoyed when it came to small things—was still there. If he could teach her to find that ability, even temporarily, then Andrew could confirm or deny her suspicions. If she thought something had changed and he didn't, and they could pinpoint it as best they could, he could, potentially, fix it. Well, maybe not fix it as in put it back the way it was, but he could at least integrate it. It would mean allowing the timelines to be threaded together at a few small points, but that was safer than ripping everything apart.

Of course, as appealing the idea of teaching Alia how to recall changes sounded, he wasn't sure she was up for learning it in the five or ten minutes he'd have in a connection he rigged up via the handlink—particularly as he'd be lucky to have two minutes before they managed to drag him out of the Imaging Chamber. Going back now was too risky. He had things he needed to sort out here. Doubling back and forth ran the risk of him crossing his own timeline. Not because he wasn't precise and he had a tendency to miscalculate, whatever his companions liked to think, but because the cracks would make the Vortex more unstable than it usually was and he didn't really want to risk being thrown headfirst into another mess that needed sorting before he'd taken care of this one.

Then again, he'd never know if he didn't try. Humans so often surprised him.

The Doctor, having decided to try to contact Alia in the hopes that she could continue to help him, had his sonic screwdriver pointed at the Imaging Chamber door and was about to turn it on when the door opened. Zoey stormed out, and the Doctor jumped aside. He followed her into the Control Room, noting that Thames was already there, mucking about with Lothos's controls in an attempt to get some of the functions the Doctor had locked down back online. He didn't appear to be having much success.

"Any luck?" Zoey drawled, expressing her frustrations in action rather than tone as she slammed the handlink down on an unused terminal. The Doctor edged closer, waiting for his chance to grab it.

"He keeps insisting that he didn't do anything here," Thames replied, frowning, "but he must've managed to scramble Lothos's circuits when he came in. I can't confirm anything."

"We never can, can we?" Zoey muttered. Louder, she said, "We've been looking into the wrong sorts of things. This Dr. Smith has knowledge that he shouldn't. Alia says that he knows about her. She even had the gall to try to _hide_ that little fact, foolishly thinking we wouldn't find out." Zoey went on to tell Thames what Alia—or rather, Andrew—had said, and the Doctor grimaced.

He'd been hoping it would take them a little longer to get all the pieces. They would probably be less inclined to let him be than the good people at Project Quantum Leap had been when they'd found it all out. Well, he didn't expect the people at this Project to realize everything; they'd probably jump to the same conclusion Alia had, and he wasn't about to correct them. The truth hadn't gone over very well at Sam's Project, but he'd be happy to deal with their disbelief again than face what would be coming to him here. Alia hadn't, to his knowledge, run into any aliens besides him, and he imagined that they would be rather curious to find that they'd caught one.

Except they hadn't caught him, not yet, and he would make sure it stayed that way this time.

Thames had been busy plugging everything Zoey had told him into Lothos and he suddenly broke into a grin. "We should have enough information for a lock!"

"_What_?" the Doctor exclaimed incredulously. He promptly clamped his mouth shut then, hoping they hadn't noticed. Zoey had said much the same, and it was rather noisy with all the beeping and bleeping and humming and whatnot in the room. But enough information for a lock? They shouldn't have _nearly_ enough on him for that.

Unfortunately, Lothos was confirming that himself, saying they had a 52.9 percent chance of getting an accurate lock on him.

But that was _impossible_. Even with the inhibitor on the blink, they shouldn't have been able to extrapolate enough information based solely on what Zoey had found out from Alia, and they didn't have any other leads. Even if they _had_ continued searching for information on him and actually managed to garner some once the inhibitor did start failing, they shouldn't have been able to get much that was very useful. He was careful.

Then again, Rose had found him, and she wouldn't've been able to do much more than type a few words into various Internet search engines. Well, Mickey may have helped a bit. He may have been a bit of an idiot, but he'd helped save the world a few times, and Rose must've seen something in him. But even between the two of them, they had only come up with information regarding his ninth self, so that didn't matter. What _did_ matter was the number of times he had been on Earth prior to the year 2000 in this regeneration where someone might have jotted down a description of him and left it somewhere it could be traced.

Was it a sign of old age that he couldn't remember?

"Get the Imaging Chamber back online," Zoey said, snatching up the handlink again. "See if you can find him in 1987 after my last contact with Alia. I want to know what he's up to."

The Doctor grinned. He finally had a bit of good luck! That was a welcome change. With that little stipulation in there, they shouldn't be able to find him. He couldn't recall being in 1987 earlier in this regeneration, and he now knew enough not to go back there, so they wouldn't manage to lock onto him in his personal future.

Zoey headed back to the Imaging Chamber, but the Doctor stuck with Thames in the Control Room. Zoey would be back, and he could get the handlink from her then. It would be easier that way and, in the meantime, he could look over Thames's shoulder and see exactly how much information they did have on him. It was _possible_ that the cracks had a positive impact on Lothos's programs, cutting down on the temporal interference in such a way that it was the equivalent of making the programming more sensitive and allowing the parallel hybrid computer to establish a lock with less information than was normally required for the pinpointing process. That, however, would also mean that the cracks were loosening some of the events that existed only in this timeline—or at least didn't exist in the one that was currently vying to replace it—and he wasn't sure he could repair anything that came loose.

From what he could see, though, the file Thames had managed to compile didn't contain anything he hadn't expected. His affiliation with Project Quantum Leap was apparently in question, despite his earlier insistences, and they'd managed to capture an earlier image of him via the handlink—which was, admittedly, _slightly_ unexpected, if only because he wasn't the one to put that particular function in the handlink, but he supposed he couldn't have expected them _not_ to modify it at some point. It had been a few years, after all. How many handlinks had the people at Quantum Leap been through, three? Mind you, they hadn't had his superior workmanship, but their modifications were ingenious nevertheless.

The Doctor glanced at another monitor, this one containing the status of the Imaging Chamber. They were through September and October and had just started into November. Clearly, trying to skim hour-by-hour—or whatever they were doing in order to find him—was slowing them down. No matter. It would take that much longer for them to throw in the towel, but he could wait. He'd learned _some_ patience in his claimed 900-odd years, and plenty more in the years he didn't claim. Still grinning, the Doctor settled back against the wall to wait.

And then something changed.

It was nearly imperceptible; he would've missed it if he wasn't watching out for these sorts of things. There'd been a slight shift, like something settling, except it didn't settle into place; it was shifted slightly, just a hairline out of its original position—not even that. Slight though it was, the shift was substantial enough to realign something that cleared a path for Lothos. He found something in some lost connection, some temporal trace that the Doctor couldn't clean up, and he got a lock.

"November 7," Thames said, reading aloud from the screen. "1987. So Smith's not in San Francisco anymore, I take it."

"Don't be so sure," was Zoey's short reply. "He's nowhere in sight. Lothos got it wrong."

"Are you sure?" Thames asked, checking the screens again. "You should be in the right place."

"I'm _not_." There was a pause. "There aren't a lot of people in sight, Thames, and I'd recognize Dr. Smith if I saw him."

"Where'd you end up?" Thames asked. "I'm not getting a clear read."

"On some godforsaken street corner," Zoey replied. "Along Jordon Road, it says. The brightest spot would be the simply delectable hunk of—"

"Save it for Alia," Thames interrupted. "Lothos has you next to Dr. Smith. Check inside the building."

This was bad. This was very, very, _very_ bad. They wouldn't make the connection—they had no reason to—but the fact that _Lothos_ had made the connection was not good. It probably was a stroke of luck—bad, in his case—that had allowed circumstances to line up just so, but the fact that such a connection had been made once meant that it could be made again, and the circumstances wouldn't have to be perfect. It would become easier each and every time they managed it, and the Doctor had no doubt that they would keep trying.

"Nothing," Zoey's voice reported bitterly. "Tell Lothos to—" She broke off. "Well, now isn't _that_ interesting."

"What?"

"How accurate is this lock, Thames? According to Lothos?"

"It's the best you're going to get," Thames said. "And it's at 96.4 percent accuracy, so it's not faulty. We shouldn't lose the connection."

"Well, we may not have found Dr. Smith, but we certainly found something just as interesting."

The Doctor cursed under his breath. He had a feeling that he knew what Zoey had happened to see, and if things had been stable, she would've been blind to it, just like everyone else. He'd known how dangerous it would be to grant Rose her request to go back again after she'd failed to run to her father and be with him in his final moments as she'd intended. Their other selves had taken the full force of the shift in the timeline, scattering almost instantly when things changed. But before they'd changed, before Rose had run out to her father—albeit prematurely, but that was another matter—there had, for a brief moment, been two of them in that timeline. Unless he was miraculously mistaken, Zoey had noticed.

The trouble with that was that the wound had been healed. When Pete Tyler had realized what was going on and why, he'd done what he'd needed to do to restore the continuum, just like Adelaide Brooke had. Those little inconsistencies should have been buried. It wasn't as if things had healed poorly; there'd only been a little bit of scarring, a few minor changes to the actual outcome of the timeline, nothing more than a dent in an otherwise smooth surface. Considering what had nearly happened, he'd thought things had turned out rather well.

And then things had shifted, the layers of time rearranging themselves, allowing glimpses of past possibilities like this through.

"Care to elaborate?" Thames asked Zoey. "I can't see what you can, you know."

The Doctor didn't stick around to hear Zoey's reply. He legged it to the Imaging Chamber, not caring that it wouldn't take much for them to realize he'd escaped the Holding Chamber when they realized he was opening all these doors. He needed to know if anything else was changing, and the quickest way to do that would be to see precisely what Zoey was seeing and figure out where it fit. Then, he would know precisely how bad things were. His imagination was unfortunately providing him with plenty of possibilities, but he refused to acknowledge them.

The door to the Imaging Chamber finally slid open under the coaxing of his sonic screwdriver, and the Doctor raced into the room. Zoey had, understandably, turned when she'd noticed the door opening, but when she couldn't spot him, she merely frowned and punched out the appropriate combination on the handlink to close it again. Whatever she could see was clearly much more interesting. It was unfortunate that he hadn't had the time to make proper adjustments on the handlink; the few he'd managed from just outside the Imaging Chamber via the sonic screwdriver were adequate but would hardly give him a good picture. Still, anything was better than just the blank walls around him now.

Wondering precisely how bad things actually were, the Doctor grabbed Zoey's free hand.


	12. Chapter 12

The walls didn't remain blank, exactly, but the images that formed themselves around the Doctor weren't clear and he could still sense the boundaries of the room. From what he _could_ see, though, things weren't as bad as they could be. There was no sign of Reapers, so that part of the timeline was still safely sealed off. He could see Rose, though, with her father, looking so happy…. And then, of course, there was his other self who knew precisely what had happened and what would result because of that, so he didn't look quite so happy.

His eyes found Rose again. She didn't know, yet, what was in her future. They'd put so much behind them, but there was so much yet to come, and she'd be brilliant, oh yes. Simply fantastic.

It couldn't last, of course. Zoey ripped her hand free and shouted an order at Thames, and the Imaging Chamber went offline. They also locked the door, of course, but that wasn't more than a minor inconvenience when he was armed with his sonic screwdriver. More troublesome was the fact that Zoey was still searching for him, and he had a feeling she had sharper eyes than Thames, especially after the glimpse she already would've gotten of him. He pulled the key off from around his neck and pocketed it, waiting.

"So, we hit a nerve, did we?" Zoey drawled.

The Doctor shoved his hands in his pockets. "You could say that, I suppose. That time was particularly sensitive, if that's what you mean."

Zoey smirked. "Lothos wasn't entirely mistaken after all. We didn't find you, but we did find someone from your past. And I'll bet it's someone who knows you about as well as you know yourself."

"Well," the Doctor said, withdrawing one hand from his pocket to tug at his ear, "that's _one_ way of putting it."

"So if we can find this special someone, we can find you," Zoey continued.

"You've got me," the Doctor said. "See? Right here, right in front of you. No illusion, no tricks. Which is probably just as well because, and you'll have to trust me on this, even if you find any of those people that you saw in 1987, not a single one of them will be able to tell you where I am. Not one."

"Don't you keep in touch with people from your old life?" Zoey asked, looking amused.

"Old life is right," the Doctor muttered. Louder, he said, "I protect my friends. Sometimes that means keeping them in the dark. If you had any friends, you might know that. They do say that ignorance is bliss and, in cases where people like you would use knowledge like that against people like them, well, you'd just be putting truth into that saying."

"But they are your friends?"

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "Oh, come on," he said in a disparaging tone. "You didn't want to run into me again to ask me questions you already know the answer to. Why not ask what's _really _on your mind?"

"Very well. Am I free to assume that you know what I witnessed? Or did you really just want to see the friends you'd abandoned one last time?"

"I didn't _abandon _them," the Doctor snapped. "They had to leave."

"Oh, and it was all for the greater good, I'm sure," Zoey sneered. "Just answer the question, Dr. Smith. Or would you rather play my game?"

The Doctor glared at her. "I know what you saw," he replied shortly.

"And did you happen to have anything to do with that?"

"Oh yes," the Doctor answered. "Quite a bit, actually. That's as you suspect, even if nothing else is. But the thing is, Zoey, you were looking for me. Lothos shouldn't have locked onto them. You can't trace my connection to them, not anymore."

"Did you think we were incapable of improving things without you?" Zoey asked, chuckling. "How naïve."

"That was beyond your capabilities," said the Doctor. "Trust me on this. I know what I'm talking about. You, on the other hand, do not. You don't even know what you saw, do you? Not really. Let me tell you, then. It was a change, the process of the timeline shifting from one path to another. It happens every single time Alia changes things, every time she completes her assignment and moves on. It's the same with Sam. Lothos and Ziggy can record the changes, keeping the so-called original history separate from what's changed, but that's the only way you can tell, isn't it? You can't distinguish the change in path any other way, can you? You can't look back on something and know that it's not always been that way. So if that's how changes work, Zoey, let me ask you: why do you think you noticed that one, if every other one passed you by?"

"Probably because you're involved."

"It's not what you're thinking," the Doctor told her quietly.

"Isn't it? Then do enlighten me, Dr. Smith. Save me the trouble and the time of guessing."

"There's trouble with time," the Doctor replied. "More specifically, it's cracking. What you did was catch a glimpse of something through the cracks."

"Is that so?" Zoey appeared supremely uninterested by that news. "Tell me this, Dr. Smith: who were they? Those two? How could they be capable of inducing such a change in time?"

"Well, I should think it's rather obvious _how_. They're out of their own time. The girl isn't the one you're interested in, though. She was just a companion. For company." The Doctor was careful to keep his tone neutral.

"And what of the man, then? Who is he to possess such power?"

The Doctor recognized the look in Zoey's eye. "No use searching for him," the Doctor replied. Zoey raised her eyebrows, and the Doctor added, "He's dead."

"And why should I believe you when you say that?" Zoey asked lightly.

"Because you've spent enough time around me to know that when I talk to you like this, I tend to tell the truth," the Doctor responded softly. "I choose what I say, Zoey. You can't make me talk, but if I choose to, then you'd best listen."

"You don't tell perfect truths," Zoey countered.

"And you do?" the Doctor asked dryly. "No, I'll grant you that: I don't tell you everything, so I'm guilty of lying by omission, yes. But, blimey, everyone is, aren't they? What sort of world would we live in if everyone blurted out the truth in its entirety?"

Zoey clearly figured that wasn't worth answering. "How do you know he's dead?"

"He's dead," the Doctor repeated. "He died saving the girl. Save yourself the time searching, Zoey. You won't turn up any evidence otherwise."

"And this girl told you all this, I'm assuming?"

The Doctor shook his head. "No, I turned up immediately following the man's death, and I helped the girl get back home. You might say that I replaced him, and I protected the girl in his place until we had to part ways. Look, Zoey, what happened doesn't matter. It's not the sort of thing that you can change."

"We can't find you because you're not from this time."

The Doctor gave a slight nod in response. He'd expected her to reach that conclusion soon enough. He'd known long before this conversation had even started that that was one secret he wouldn't be able to keep. It would have been nice _to_ keep it, of course, but when he wasn't the only one who knew it, he wasn't the only one who had to guard it, and while he knew how well or how poorly he could guard it, he wasn't up to measuring Andrew's or Alia's standards, though Alia had, admittedly, been able to keep it for quite some time now. Granted, he wasn't sure she'd entirely _believed_ it until he'd met up with her again, but—

"So what are you here to do, then, Dr. Smith?"

The Doctor frowned. Zoey's tone clearly told him she didn't expect an answer—or, at least, not a truthful one—but he suspected she wanted an answer and would do anything to get it. She'd have a time getting it, of course, but even that knowledge wouldn't stop her from trying, and the Doctor didn't particularly want a repeat of his last little visit, especially on top of everything else. He was better off continuing with half-truths, then. He could be doing something useful while they spent their time trying to puzzle those out. "Grace," he said simply.

Zoey's eyes narrowed. "You know very well that you can't rescue her. She needs to be in the Holding Chamber or Alia won't leap. We thought to use her as bait when we thought you were watching us, sure that you couldn't resist trying to make her stay with us a bit more comfortable, but that's not going to be the true reason you're here. What's your real assignment, Dr. Smith?"

The Doctor let a smile spread across his face. It wasn't a particularly nice smile, but he'd had occasion to use it before, just as he did now. "Do you know what you're doing?" he asked. Without giving her a chance to reply, he continued, "You're making assumptions, Zoey, assumptions that you really shouldn't be making. I'm a time traveller, yes. But I can control _exactly_ where I go." Usually. Providing he didn't miscalculate, the TARDIS wasn't trying to teach him a lesson, nothing else managed to hijack him…but she didn't need to know that.

Now Zoey smiled, and while hers did not mirror his, it was no less false. "Well, if you're so fortunate as to be able to control where you go," she purred, "then you can help us do the same with Alia. Surely you wouldn't leave the poor girl to the whims of time?"

The Doctor snorted. "I doubt _Time_'s leaping her about. But that's beside the point. I did help you, Zoey, last time I was here. I did all I could. You just don't have the technology for the control you want. Believe me, what you and Sam are doing is the best you can under the circumstances. I can't change any of that."

"Then what are you here to change?"

"I don't travel to change things." The Doctor paused, waiting for her to say something but continuing when she didn't. "Well, not unless I have to, and then it's only small things. The purpose of _your_ Project is to change things. That always was your intention. It wasn't Sam's. Sam never intended to get caught up in all of that, leaping about to fix things. All he wanted to do was study the past and learn from it. Did you know that, or did you just assume that he'd want to make things better because he was that sort of person?" Another pause, this one deliberately too short to allow Zoey time to answer. "Sam knows better. He knows how dangerous changing things can be. If he didn't fully understand it when he started off, I expect he realizes that now. But you don't. How can you? You _want_ to wreck havoc wherever you can; anything that falls out of place because of your doing is just encouraged. You can't see the real damage you could do because you want to create as much of it as you can."

"Are you trying to tell me that you are trying to prevent Alia's changes because of the damage she could do?" Zoey smirked. "Well, you've been doing a splendid job of that, I must say."

She didn't understand. He hadn't _really_ expected her to. Alia hadn't, and Zoey had been her mentor. But for all her cruelty, Zoey was sharp. Of course, she was blinded by her own beliefs and assumptions and teachings, and he expected that those were mostly what were stopping her from seeing the truth now. He wondered if he should just tell her, connect the dots as he had for Alia. It wouldn't do much good, though. Even if she did understand, she wouldn't agree with him, let alone help him.

Still. There was a reason that she was allowing him to talk now, and he wasn't entirely convinced it was just to milk him for information. He was allowing her to do quite a bit of that, but he knew precisely what he was saying. She hadn't caught him off his guard yet. No guarantee that that wouldn't happen in the future, if things got a bit complicated, but for now, well, for now he hoped to tell her just enough to give her an idea of what she was up against. With any luck, she'd realize that she couldn't win and would give in.

He somehow doubted that, though. He was never that lucky.

At least this time, there wouldn't be any casualties. Well, there shouldn't be. He'd be sure to keep them away from Grace, and he'd figure out a way to sort out the cracks in spite of them, so he wouldn't have to worry about that, either. And he certainly didn't plan on actually injuring any of them, so unless they got to him before he could do what he needed to do, no one would get hurt.

"Actually, I was," the Doctor agreed. "Well, at least until you lot decided to meddle in something that can't be meddled with."

"Oh? Then how are we managing to meddle, Dr. Smith, if it's something with which we cannot meddle?"

"No, that's my point. You aren't. That's why time's cracking, Zoey. Because you're trying to do something that you can't. This isn't a game. You aren't playing with a couple of pawns; you're gambling with lives. That includes your own," he added, catching sight of her expression.

"And you intend to stop me?"

The Doctor shook his head. "If it were so simple, I could have stopped you before you began. It never would have happened, and you would never have known the difference."

"Oh, of course. You don't change things." Zoey crossed her arms. "How do you manage it, Dr. Smith? What power do you propose to hold over time?"

"I'm the Doctor."

When he didn't continue, Zoey was forced to prompt him. "And?"

"And that's really all you need to know," the Doctor answered quietly. He held out his hand. "Give me the handlink." Zoey purposely tucked it under her arm at that, and the Doctor gave her a look. "I need to talk to Alia. Give me the handlink."

Zoey laughed at that, and then she asked the one question humans always asked: "Why?"

On most occasions, he liked that question. He'd asked it himself a number of times. But Zoey wasn't really asking _why_; she knew that. He'd told her, though admittedly he'd said only the basic reason and none of the ones that built upon it. She wanted to know what he intended to do, and what he'd do if she tried to stop him. She wanted to stop him, to cause him as much grief as possible. In addition, she wanted to know how he thought he could stop her, could prevent time from cracking. Even though he told her he couldn't, she still thought that was his intention—well, that, or that he'd completely lost it, but he was rather of the opinion that though she probably hated him, given what had happened last time, she had to give him some grudging respect. He'd been proven right last time. She knew that. She had to know that, given how much he'd known last time, it was just possible that he was right about this.

Mind you, even if she did believe him, there was no guarantee that she'd be particularly bothered by it.

"I can explain later," the Doctor said.

"No. If you're going to make excuses, you might as well make them now."

The Doctor glowered at her, but Zoey was clearly too used to doing just the same to wilt under the expression. Admittedly, he didn't put as much behind it as he could have, but it spoke to her strength and her stubbornness and her character. Mostly her character, given what she would have put others through. Unfortunately, when it came to that sort of thing, much the same could be said about him. He had his fair share of darkness in his past.

"Time's resilient," the Doctor finally said, "and it's temperamental. Sometimes, it can be more fragile than anything in the universe. When it cracks, like it is now, it needs to be patched. Immediately. If it's not, something will find its way in through those cracks, whether it's the Void or another universe or something else altogether. Whatever it is, it's hungry. It won't be sated until there's nothing left. Can you even understand that, Zoey? _Nothing_. Do you know what nothing truly is?"

There was a long pause, then, "I imagine I have a better idea of it than you."

"You don't." The Doctor straightened up. "You can imagine _having_ nothing, perhaps, but I'll bet all you're really imagining is simply the absence of _something_. You do that to your guests here, don't you? You'll deprive them of something, giving them nothing. But you can't really give nothing. If you take away their food, you aren't giving them nothing; you're giving them hunger. If you take the light, you give them darkness. When I say there'll be _nothing_, I'm not just saying there won't be any material things. I mean _nothing_. No perceptions, no sensations. And, very quickly, no thought, for there will be no self to form any thought. The structure that weaves the universe together and holds it steady is going to collapse, and everything is built upon that. If it goes, so does everything else."

"Then we can start fresh, can't we?" Zoey returned easily.

"It's not like that," the Doctor told her quietly. If things _did_ piece themselves together, it wouldn't be in an order of anyone's choosing; they would simply reassemble themselves to mimic the nearest possible timeline—or, in this case, the timeline which was trying to break through, nearest or not. The nearest timeline did not involve a change around a particular fixed point, given the number of other variables that would change in response to that. Of course, because the change was in the future, the past leading up to it would seem similar enough. It was possible that not all things would degrade; some might simply slip over. That would not make it very easy to identify how far things had progressed, let alone convince Zoey not to string him up by his thumbs before he had a chance to set things straight, if he could.

"Well, you can't seem to tell me what it will be like," retorted Zoey, keeping her voice light. "It's a terrible pity that you can't come up with a better description than 'nothing'. You seem to be forgetting what else we do here, Dr. Smith. We turn our fortunes from nothing. 'Nothing' offers us more potential than a measly 'something'. When Alia came to us, she was nothing. She's come a long way since then."

"That's still working with something to mould," the Doctor answered, "even if you deny it. You don't seem to understand, Zoey, that you'll be swept away right along with everyone else."

"Including you."

"Including me," the Doctor conceded, "though I'll be able to hold on a bit longer than you, I'd wager, given how long it'll take to wipe away every mark I've ever made." Providing Alia didn't change things now, of course; even with her best intentions otherwise, he didn't know for certain whether she'd truly succeeded. It wouldn't take much to shift Grace's path, and that change would carry through a lot faster than if the change had been in his past. There were fewer years through which the change needed to travel to have its full effect.

"And why would you say that?"

"Because I've faced worse than you," the Doctor bit out sharply. "I haven't always won; sometimes no one wins. But I've survived, Zoey. In spite of everything, _because_ of everything, _I've survived_."

Zoey smiled at him. "So have I," she said, moving suddenly as if to whack him over the head with the handlink.

The Doctor caught her arm. "Thank you," he said, extracting the device from her hand. He wasn't convinced that she _had_ intended to hit him with it—it was rather delicate, and he wasn't sure they had another one, seeing as it was the same one he had created—but then again, she wasn't exactly in her right mind. She probably hadn't been for years, given how twisted her spirit was.

He set to work immediately, though it was difficult to do that while fending off Zoey. She finally managed to wrestle control of the handlink from him. He tried to get it back, of course, but it was a bit difficult as he still held the back to it in one hand and the sonic screwdriver in the other, and he'd been picking at some of the wires, so some of those were poking out of the handlink to get entangled. Not that he couldn't mend it if anything snapped, but that was bothersome, and he wasn't _nearly_ finished with it yet, and he had to hurry.

Unfortunately, Zoey managed to trip him up and used his distraction to activate the handlink before he even had a chance to warn her against it. Well, that was to say that she _tried_ to activate the handlink. It didn't work. At all.

That's not to say that it didn't have an effect. It did have an effect—a rather noticeable one, actually. It just wasn't the desired effect, not by any stretch of the imagination. The Imaging Chamber locked down, and the remaining power in the handlink was cut off.

"Thames?" Zoey called.

"Don't bother," the Doctor said, getting to his feet. "The communication is going to be down along with everything else while I'm in here." Even with the occasional fluctuation in the temporal energy that drove the inhibitor, therefore affecting the effectiveness of the coverage, it was designed to steady itself so that it could run at a constant, continuous level. After the slip that had allowed Lothos to lock onto his ninth self, it ought to be working correctly for a while.

That, and the fact that he was fairly confident the particular circuits that needed to be functioning for any communication to take place had been fried. The lights were still dimming, the air circulation had cut off—lovely prospect, but he ought to be able to at least repair that with his sonic screwdriver if Zoey gave him the chance—and the temperature appeared to be dropping by fractions of a degree. If he hadn't known better, he would've felt that they'd shoved him back in what they so lovingly called isolation. Except this room was notably larger.

"Don't be silly," Zoey snapped. "That inhibitor of yours only cut out what _you_ were saying. Thames?" she repeated, louder than before.

"Yes," the Doctor agreed, "but while I think it might be in my best interests to see if I can repair the air circulation system, it's _not_ in my best interests to repair the communication link to the main control room."

"_What_?"

It was the first time he'd ever noticed the faintest tinge of fear colouring Zoey's voice. The Doctor grinned in grim humour. "Oh, yes," he said. "That's down. And there're no handy vents in here, are there? Well, no big handy vents that you could crawl through. What'd you use, a tracheal microsystem? I never had a chance to look in here much, really."

"How should I know? I didn't design the thing!"

The Doctor sighed. "Do you know who did?" he asked gently. Zoey made an irritated negative noise, and the Doctor blew out a breath between his teeth. "_Brilliant_. I might've known that _you_ didn't even know who was behind this Project. And here I was, hoping you were just trying to be clever before."

"Just get us out of here," Zoey ordered stiffly.

"I'm working on it," the Doctor said, fiddling with his sonic screwdriver's settings, perfectly aware of the fact that if anything happened to Zoey now, things would not play out as they should in the future.

Pity, that, but some things couldn't be helped. The way things were now, he didn't even want to toe the line. Overstepping it, even just slightly, could be bad. And, frankly, he'd had enough of _bad_. He always seemed to have more than his fair share of it, at least in terms of luck. The cracks were his fault, yes, but they were also his responsibility, so he had to fix them, no matter what it took. Time had to be preserved—both the good _and_ the bad.

It took some time, but he finally managed to fix things up enough to get the air circulating again, along with the lights and the heat. It was tricky, considering that he wasn't quite sure how it was all set up, but it wasn't as if it were as simple as trying to open the door. From what he could gather from his scans, a lockdown had been initiated that was beyond their usual sort of lockdown—or at least the sort of lockdown that they'd had on their facility the last time he'd escaped. This lock was more complicated and would take a bit longer to sort out. Not to mention the fact that the gears themselves were jammed and quite possibly seized, given that the circuits which drove them had ceased functioning with a rather sudden burst of heat. They were, quite frankly, lucky nothing had caught on fire. Still, as things were, the door might as well have been made of wood. Thick, heavy wood that opened by sliding upwards and had no convenient place to grab onto to help it along.

"You should never underestimate the usefulness of a doorknob," the Doctor muttered, turning from his latest survey of the room. "Handy things, for opening doors, bracing something to block them, pulling teeth out, that sort of thing. Useful." He looked at Zoey. "Remember that, if you ever find yourself involved in another top secret project."

"Get us out of here," Zoey ordered.

"That's not my priority," the Doctor said, picking up the handlink from where Zoey had dropped it after she'd realized its uselessness to her. "You're breathing, I'm breathing, and neither of us are about to die immediately, so I need to talk to Alia."

"Alia's not important."

The Doctor looked up from the handlink. "She's very important," he said. "Don't underestimate her importance. That's worse than underestimating the usefulness of a doorknob. Door hinges, too, actually, because if you have a doorknob, it implies having a door that needs hinges, and that's really another easy way to—"

"Shut up," snapped Zoey. "If you won't try to get out of here until you talk to Alia, then talk to her, but for my sake don't blather on about everything else in the meantime."

"Yeah, sorry," the Doctor said, even though he wasn't sorry in the least. "Little flaw of mine, that tendency to blather on. Thought you might've picked that up last time. I mean, yes, I did try to be tight-lipped at the start—well, more in the middle, I suppose—but that was only because—"

"Get to work."

The Doctor didn't bother replying; she'd only snap at him again, and it was getting a bit tedious. Zoey didn't like admitting that she wasn't in control, and she liked even less being put in situations where it was clear that she didn't have the upper hand. She thrived in an environment where everyone looked up to her. Didn't matter, really, if she looked up to someone else so long as no one else knew about it. Well, he was fairly sure Thames was at least suspicious. He'd be in the best position to question everything, after all; he was closest to Zoey. But as long as everyone else thought she was at the top, Zoey was content to accept her orders from somewhere else.

Unfortunately, she didn't seem to know where that somewhere else was or who or what was holed up there. She probably got her orders relayed through Lothos. Even if he could find them, he wasn't entirely sure he could follow a trail back to their source. He didn't like admitting that there was something he couldn't do any more than Zoey liked admitting that she had to look to him to escape the Imaging Chamber, but he couldn't afford the time it would take to do that. If it had been easy, he would've noticed last time he'd been here, but he hadn't. That meant that whoever was behind this was a bit of an expert.

"I need something to feed the signal through," the Doctor muttered, putting the sonic screwdriver in his teeth so he could dig through his pockets. He had to have something in there that would work. His searching fingers found the object he'd been carrying around in his pockets for a while now, what Ralph and Fred had identified as an oiler. He pulled it out and gave it a calculating look. He'd been planning to use it for something else, but…it might actually work better for this.

"What are you even doing?" Zoey asked as he started twining wires around the oiler.

"Trying to boost the signal. I'll need this to act as a power reservoir or I won't have enough time to explain things to Alia; I'd be draining things too fast." Zoey just shook her head and resumed ignoring him, and the Doctor supposed that she would have perhaps understood him better if he hadn't chosen to talk around the sonic screwdriver that he had clamped between his teeth. There was the chance that he simply hadn't said enough for her to understand him properly, but he preferred to maintain the belief that there was no point in wasting his breath; he highly doubted that Zoey would have understood him anyway.

She certainly hadn't shown any great leaps in understanding the importance of the cracks.

Then again, it had taken Alia time, too, and Alia was more inclined to trust him in the first place.

Well, he'd _thought_ she'd be more inclined to trust him. He hadn't really counted on how much leaping about wronging rights would change her. He should have known it would; even though she was strong, she couldn't withstand change. No one could, really.

It was a few minutes before he was confident that what he had would work. Zoey had taken to glaring at the door now, muttering curses under her breath about what she'd do to Thames for not getting her out of here by now. The Doctor didn't bother to try explaining things again. He didn't particularly like being trapped in here any more than she did, but he did intend to use it to his advantage.

"Come here," he said. "I'll need you for this."

"Why?"

"Because the link's weak enough as it is. I would've managed it on my own before, but now I need you to strengthen the link." Zoey rolled her eyes. "Just take my hand," the Doctor insisted. Reluctantly, Zoey allowed him to grab hold of her. "I'll be quick as I can," he promised.

"If you can't get us out of here once you're finished with this," Zoey muttered, "I'll kill you."

"Well, I think you were planning on that anyway, weren't you?" the Doctor asked, giving her a sidelong look. "But, yes, getting out of here _is_ the plan, because I don't fancy dying right now. I've got too many other things to do before I get around to that." He paused. "Looks like we're all set," he said, grinning.

"Then we'll get on with it," Zoey said. Reaching over, she activated the handlink.

* * *

><p>AN: Well, Zoey hasn't killed the Doctor yet, so that's a good sign, right? She's even (somewhat) willing to put up with him until he can get her out of the Imaging Chamber. Anyway, a quick thanks goes out to those who read and review.


	13. Chapter 13

A/N: I had fun writing this chapter, so I do hope you enjoy it. Thanks to everyone for reading it.

* * *

><p>Andrew and Alia had walked out to the park and were now sitting on one of the benches, filling out forms. Andrew had wanted to do it on campus, but Alia had figured getting away from it would decrease the likelihood of any of Andrew's real friends turning up and talking him out of things. She knew the Doctor wouldn't've taken his friend out of the Holding Chamber, since if he'd been a leapee and <em>remembered<em> it, he would know that the leapee couldn't leave if the leaper was going to leap, but she worried about the fact that she hadn't leaped yet. Her only hope was that once Andrew got things down in writing, he wouldn't be dissuaded from his new path very easily.

"Alia!"

Alia jerked her head up at the sound of the Doctor's voice and caught sight of the Doctor and Zoey on the path in front of her. She grabbed the papers she'd been filling in before they slid off her lap. "Why aren't I leaping?" she asked, having already looked around and deciding that no one else was in earshot besides Andrew.

"Zoey here?" Andrew asked, glancing around.

Alia nodded distractedly, listening as Zoey started complaining bitterly about the Doctor's attempts to destroy their Project. "Shush up," the Doctor said, interrupting Zoey's tirade. "Limited time, remember? More important things to do."

"I am Alia's partner, Dr. Smith, not you," Zoey replied coldly. "I'll answer her question however I like."

"Well, you weren't really answering her question," the Doctor said. "I'm not the reason she's not leaping. Well, I shouldn't be. Besides, it'll take more power if I need to conduct your voice pattern to Andrew as well, so keep quiet for once." He shook his head, then looked back at Alia. "Grab Andrew's hand. He'll need to hear this."

"What?"

"Grab hold of his hand," the Doctor repeated, pulling out his sonic screwdriver. "I just need to tweak a few circuits, reversing the polarity and extrapolating—"

"Yeah, okay," Alia said, snatching Andrew's hand. "I think I get it. You're going to try to reverse the process. Instead of me seeing someone you're touching, someone I'm touching can see you? And you've rigged it for sound as well?"

The Doctor grinned. "Oh, you're brilliant, you are. Yes. Exactly." He finished whatever he was doing and looked up. "It working?" Andrew nodded, clearly having guessed what was going on, and the Doctor continued, "Now, there's something I need the two of you to do. I need you to see if you can spot anything that's not quite right. Something that's odd, or out of place, or feels wrong. Something that doesn't quite match up, I mean. You'll probably be the one to notice it, Alia. You're the one who's leaping, the one who touches time. It'll take longer for things to catch up with you and realign the way they do for everyone else. Andrew here can help you with that, then. If there's something you see that he doesn't, even a small thing, that'll be the first one."

"How many of these things are there?" Alia asked slowly.

The Doctor looked troubled for a moment. "If I'm lucky," he finally pronounced, "not many. Well, if I'm _really_ lucky, none at all. But my luck's not usually that good, I'm afraid, so you'll have to keep your eyes peeled."

"But I'm not entirely sure what you want us to look for," Alia protested.

"It can be anything," the Doctor said. "I don't know what'll turn up. But whatever it is, it will be wrong. That's the most I can tell you."

"That's really not helpful," Alia said bluntly. "You know that, right?"

"We'll try," Andrew said, catching the Doctor's exasperated look.

"Why do we need to do this?" Alia asked.

"Enough questions, Alia," Zoey interrupted. Alia glanced at Andrew. He looked confused, and she imagined that the Doctor hadn't extrapolated her voice pattern after all. "We haven't time. Just do as you're told."

Alia shrugged. "You're not the one doing the telling. Is this why I'm not leaping? Because we need to see if we can find anything that's wrong?"

The Doctor shook his head. "Not exactly, no. Anything that's decidedly out of the ordinary will be the result of a change. It'll mean things are coming through the cracks. Well, coming through or falling through, one way or the other. Physical things, visible things, more than just energy. It'll mean some of the cracks are widening."

"What cracks?" Andrew asked.

"Long story," the Doctor said. "I'll let Alia tell it. I don't think we—" His image flickered. "Oh, yes," he said. "We most definitely do not have the time. I'll try contacting you again in fifteen minutes. Start searching…. Start searching in the clearing, Alia. Something might've ripped with the fluctuating energy. I was careful, but that spot will be weak."

"And what if we find something?" Alia queried.

"Be careful," the Doctor said. "I can't really say much more than that; I don't know what you'll find. Just be sure to use your head."

"So don't do anything stupid," Andrew translated, chuckling. "Yeah, I guess sometimes we don't use common sense if we get panicked. But there's no way to contact you?"

"'Fraid not," the Doctor answered. His image flickered again. "No more questions, right?" he asked, despite their confusion. "Good! Well, best of luck. Don't do anything I wouldn't do." Then, he and Zoey vanished completely.

Andrew looked at Alia. "What was he talking about with these cracks? And who was that with him?"

"That was Zoey," Alia responded. "They were in the Imaging Chamber, and the Doctor somehow fixed it so you could see them. As for the cracks…. Well, the Doctor says time is cracking, so the cracks are in the timeline. I don't really understand it, but he says it's bad." She handed him her stack of papers and stood up. "Come on. Clearing's this way."

"What's special about this clearing? Why's it a weak spot?"

"Don't ask so many questions," said Alia. "Especially when I'm the only one around to ask; I don't know most of the answers." She waited a few seconds, then added, "The Doctor had kept his time machine in the clearing. That's what he meant when he said it would be weak even though he'd been careful."

Andrew still did ask her questions—she supposed she couldn't really have expected anything else—but did seem to be trying to make sense of it all. She had to hand it to him for trying; she wasn't even bothering to attempt making sense of any of it by now. She'd tried, and she still only really came out of all the Doctor's explanations with nothing more than strong impressions of a dire future. Some of that was her fault; she was refusing to think about the fact that the Doctor was from some point centuries in her future, or that he had evidently come back to her general time period frequently. He knew Grace Holloway, after all. He'd be bound to meet other people.

How many other people had the Doctor run into, preaching about imminent disaster if they didn't help him or do as they were told?

Had anyone ever actually ignored him?

Ignoring him was difficult, yes, Alia knew that from experience, but had any of the horrors the Doctor had undoubtedly predicted at one point or another ever actually come to fruition because someone had refused to help him, or had he managed to stop them all? Had he always needed the help he seemed to think he did, or did he just request it to keep people busy, distracted from the real danger?

They didn't find anything in the clearing, and Andrew suggested they work their way around the park before heading back to campus. Alia had nixed that idea; they wouldn't make it back to campus, she pointed out, before the fifteen minutes the Doctor had allotted them elapsed anyway. They might as well just spend their time in the park.

She didn't add that, the way the Doctor had been talking, it might be the last peaceful time they'd have in a long while.

She wished, not for the first time, that she would just leap out and be done with it.

Not that she'd be done with it at all if the Doctor was right, not if she understood that part correctly. Cracking here, cracking there—it didn't _sound_ like this cracking was something that could be escaped, and he'd made it quite clear that it would affect her. Somehow. It would affect everything. Whatever changes were wrought, she'd be caught up in them, for better or for worse.

Frankly, however, she couldn't imagine much worse than her life at the Project.

"What was it we were supposed to be looking for again?" Andrew asked, interrupting her thoughts as he came to a halt, grabbing her arm to stop her from moving ahead as he stared ahead of them.

Alia glanced at him, then peered ahead, too, trying to discern what he was looking at. "Something out of the ordinary, far as I can gather. That, or something that I can tell is different and something you can't."

"Maybe he got it wrong," Andrew said. "The Doctor, I mean. Maybe he got it backwards."

"What are you talking about?" Alia asked.

"It's darker up there," Andrew said, pointing.

Alia followed his finger and raised an eyebrow. "It's called a shadow. You can see the outline. It's cast by a cloud."

"But it's not cloudy," Andrew pointed out quietly.

Alia looked skyward and realized he was right. She looked ahead of them again, following the outline of the shadow—or whatever it was—with her eyes. "Well," she said softly, "that's certainly something that's wrong."

It wasn't conspicuous. It _did_ just look like a section of the park was in a shadow. It was darker there, just slightly, as if the sun wasn't quite as bright. She might as well have been wearing sunglasses; it wasn't much different than that. A slightly different tint, everything a shade darker than normal, but otherwise exactly the same.

If it was a crack, Alia wasn't sure what the fuss was. The world wasn't ending. Nothing was falling apart. No pieces were lost. It looked normal.

It was just cloudy on the other side of the crack or something. The world on the other side just happened to be different enough from her own to make the day a cloudy one. Everything was still there. It wasn't really different, not in any important way.

She couldn't decide if she really believed that or if she was just trying to convince herself.

"So that's a crack, you think?" Andrew asked.

Alia nodded. "Can't think of what else it would be."

"You stay here. I'll check it out."

"What? No! You can't!"

Andrew laughed. "Why not?"

"Because you're being idiotic," Alia retorted. "You're just looking for an adventure, aren't you? Open your eyes, Andrew. This is real. It's not some story. I'm not going to let you go and get yourself killed."

"I don't intend to get myself killed," Andrew replied. "I'm just going to check it out and make sure that it is what we think it is."

"Don't. We'll just wait for the Doctor."

"If he's a hologram, he can't do anything."

"Then he'll come back," Alia shot back. But she didn't know that for certain, and Andrew probably knew that, judging by the look he was giving her. And…she didn't want to fight about this. Andrew might still be the reason she wasn't leaping. Maybe she hadn't really done what she'd needed to do. Maybe the Doctor was wrong and talking to him hadn't really solved anything. Maybe Zoey was right, as always, and Alia needed to take slightly more drastic measures.

Or, in this case, let Andrew do that for himself.

But if that were the case, why did she have to feel so rotten about the whole idea? She'd learned to stomach these sorts of things after her first few leaps. Better someone else than her.

She'd believed that until she'd met Sam.

"This is your choice, isn't it?" Andrew asked, looking at Alia. "The choice you needed to make to guarantee your freedom." Alia shook her head, but Andrew ignored that. "But it's not really a choice, is it, if you think about it? I have to go, Alia. You can't—you're not even really supposed to be here—and there's no one else about. Even if there were, we couldn't ask them to do this. We don't know what will happen."

"You can't go," Alia protested. "We don't know if it's safe."

"But that's why I have to go," Andrew said. "I don't want anyone else to get hurt."

"The Doctor ought to be here soon," Alia said. "It won't kill us to wait for him."

"But if I look at this," Andrew pointed out, "we'll have something to actually tell him about it. I want to be useful, Alia. I want to be helpful, like you and the Doctor. Don't tell me I can't."

Alia stared at him. "You don't understand," she began slowly.

"No," Andrew agreed, "but neither do you, really. So, I'm up for a bit of exploring so that I can find out. I'll be fine. You're worrying too much."

Alia closed her eyes. This leap had softened her. She couldn't afford to have a heart, to care. Survival at the Project and on her leaps had always meant protecting herself, whatever the cost. She'd blend in and lie and beguile and trick to get her way, taking more serious measures if that didn't work. But meeting Sam had shaken her, and that was why she'd been able to take the hit, just that once. She'd gotten her own taste of Hell instead of condemning him to it, or the kid he'd leaped into. It was funny. Jimmy hadn't really been a kid. But she'd…. Even as Connie, she'd had a soft spot for him.

And yet she still hadn't noticed the change, hadn't noticed when Sam had replaced him.

Not that there had been any reason to notice the change; she was simply there to wreck havoc and leave as much destruction in her wake as she could. That's what she did. Home wrecking. An easy assignment.

Until Sam.

She still thought she could have tasted freedom if Zoey hadn't been on her back, if she could have just talked with Sam for a bit longer before being informed that she had to kill him. She didn't know why she thought that, exactly. Sam was about as helpless as she. He just didn't have threats hanging over his head. And he helped people. She didn't. No matter what Andrew thought.

"Go on, then," Alia said, keeping her voice dull and uninterested. She didn't see any point in telling him to be careful—how could he, when they had no idea what was in front of them?—or saying that there was nothing she could do to stop him anyway. He was determined, yes, and perhaps he would have gotten around her. But the truth was, she probably could have stopped him one way or another. She just couldn't make herself do it.

She was still afraid that she'd done something wrong and that that was why she was still here, why she hadn't leaped.

If she let him go, or if he got himself killed, she could probably leap out of here. Assignment completed, no chance of error, no way to correct the path. Another leap, and another shot at going home.

Forget the Doctor and his vague hints at a choice. Things could be changed. She was looking at the evidence right now. He knew what was going on, true, but he didn't know everything. He wasn't sure how to fix things up; if he did, he'd be doing it already. He wouldn't need her.

He still didn't need her. Especially after this, after what she was allowing to happen. He'd blame her. He'd claim she was affecting Grace, that she was changing the girl's future to the point that it would change _his_ past, and then they'd have consequences to live with. Not that he'd ever truly said what those consequences would have been. Would it matter, if time was cracking?

Would it even have begun cracking if it hadn't been for the Doctor?

Would it have even been susceptible to this cracking if it hadn't been for the Doctor?

Was he the cause behind it after all, in his desperate attempt to keep time from changing? Perhaps he'd had it all wrong after all. Perhaps she wasn't the one changing things; perhaps it was him, entirely him. Was it possible to see the effect before the cause if you could see all the different levels at once?

Oh, she wasn't even going to go there. She had enough trouble processing everything the Doctor _had_ told her, let alone speculating about what he hadn't.

Andrew had approached the shadow, pacing its edges. Alia turned her back. She just knew he was going to get himself killed. She wasn't sure how, but after everything the Doctor had been preaching, she didn't think that death was much of a stretch here. She may not be able to bring herself to stop Andrew's explorations, but she didn't have to let Grace remember watching her friend die. She'd kept her bargain with the Doctor. She'd tried. She'd talked to Andrew, and she hadn't done anything Grace could truly regret. Grace Holloway probably wouldn't have been able to talk Andrew out of exploring anyway. Alia had had much more practice at that sort of thing, though she'd spent more time talking people into things.

And if Andrew did meet his maker, then she was satisfying the conditions of her contract with Zoey, the one she'd signed when she'd been too naïve and desperate to argue about its finer points and when she'd been in too much of a rush to read the fine print. Soon enough, Andrew would be out of the way. Permanently.

"I can't do this," Alia muttered. She'd talked to Andrew, truthfully. She hadn't done that in…. Well, she hadn't done that since she'd met Sam. Heck, she liked the kid. He was nice. She hadn't gotten to know someone this well in ages, not at a time when she hadn't been lying through her teeth every second sentence or so. She turned back to call him away.

She was too late.

Andrew was gone.

* * *

><p>"I think your fifteen minutes are up," Zoey observed, checking her watch.<p>

Dr. Smith ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it looking more ridiculous than usual. "The connection's gone," he said dumbly. "I don't understand it. It _can't_ be gone." He started fiddling with the handlink once more, using that funny little tool of his as if he could possibly find out something useful with it.

"Evidently it is."

"No, no, nononononono," Dr. Smith said, "you don't understand. It literally _can't_ be gone."

"Then enlighten me," Zoey drawled. "Why can't it be gone?"

"You're still here," Dr. Smith pointed out, "and you're fine. And as long as you're here, I have a connection."

Zoey decided against acknowledging that bit of nonsense. "Then make the connection instead of blathering on about it."

"But I _can't_," Dr. Smith repeated. "I just…. There's nothing."

Zoey raised her eyebrows. "Really. How intriguing. But if your efforts towards that don't pan out, then why not focus on getting us out of here?"

Dr. Smith frowned at her. "You seem to be missing the point. This is _bad_, Zoey, or have you forgotten that already?"

Zoey rolled her eyes, ignoring Dr. Smith as he continued his prattling. He was clever, yes. She'd never denied that. But he was insufferable, and that hadn't changed one bit since she'd last seen him. To be trapped with him in the same room, when he had the potential to get them out and refused to do so…. She would have strangled him by now if she thought she could still get out without his help.

She didn't want to be indebted to him, and she could reason away any debt he might think she owed him. He was the reason she was trapped and, as far as she was concerned, he could very well get her out. She would show her gratitude by making his eventual death a quick one. Thames would be disappointed, and in truth, so would she, but she wasn't about to risk letting the infuriating man slip from their grasp again.

It was some time later when she realized Dr. Smith had stopped talking and indeed even stopped tinkering with the handlink. The handlink itself lay a few feet from him now, along with that silver tool he'd been using on it. Dr. Smith himself was curled up in a tight ball, and from what she could see of his face, he wore the same expression that she had seen on so many of the leapees. Pain, and overriding terror.

"Something wrong?" she asked lightly.

He didn't answer her.

"Would you prefer if I asked what is wrong?" she continued. She didn't care one whit, of course, but at least if she found out why he had stopped working, she had a better chance of making him start again. True, going about things this way was far more tedious than her usual methods, but as much as she hated to admit it, she stood in unfamiliar territory. She'd never truly understood Dr. Smith when he'd worked for them, and in spite of recent revelations, she still wasn't sure what made him tick, or what would set him off.

She still didn't receive an answer.

Zoey stood up and walked over to Dr. Smith. Crouching down, she gave him a good shake. "Snap out of it and get back to work."

"Don't touch me."

"Fine." Zoey released him and stood back up. "Get back to work."

Dr. Smith uncurled himself and glared at her before eyeing her carefully as if trying to assess her next move. "I can't do anything," he informed her, his voice low. "It's too late. _I'm_ too late."

"I don't care if you're too late to contact Alia," Zoey snapped. "I want to get out of here."

"That's not what I mean," Dr. Smith retorted, though he couldn't seem to summon the energy to put as much venom behind his speech as she had in hers. "I took too much time. The cracks must have begun widening before I even came here, and I was too thick to notice. I'm too late, Zoey. Time's cracking. Some things are lost. Some things are new. Some things have just shifted a bit. But time's still unravelling."

"Well, we seem to still exist, so at least your prophecy that we'll come out of this with nothing hasn't come to pass."

"Don't count on it," Dr. Smith returned. "It's hardly started. There are—" He broke off abruptly, his breath hissing through his teeth as he winced at a sudden flash of pain. "There are more cracks opening up every second, Zoey. Each second, every second, and within those seconds, cracking are widening and things are changing, and you may not think the world will be that much different, but if things keep going the way they are, you won't even be in it."

"Is that supposed to be a threat?" Zoey smirked. "I must say, it could use a little work."

"You're not helping," Dr. Smith muttered, climbing slowly to his feet. "Just…stay back, all right?"

"Gladly," Zoey said, though she didn't miss Dr. Smith's irritated look when she didn't move any further away from him.

He took a few steps back and leaned against the wall. "Things are starting to break apart," he gasped. "Past, present—I don't even _know_ how much of the future will be left. I'm having a hard enough time keeping myself together, let alone trying to determine the extent of the damage so far. I can't…. I can't do anything. History is being destroyed, and _I can't do anything_."

Zoey laughed. "Oh, really? How disappointing."

Dr. Smith had a wild look in his eyes, one she genuinely had never seen before. Not the first time she'd met him, not in any of the leapees she'd seen since, not in any of the fools they'd employed—including the ones who had snapped. "I don't know how bad it's going to be," he confessed, grabbing at his hair as if he could pull answers from the recesses of his mind. "I don't know how much is going to change. I don't know how long it's going to take."

"Pity," Zoey remarked, wondering how long this state of his was going to last.

"It wasn't even supposed to end this way," Dr. Smith said softly. "Not any of it. Not the world, not your little Project, not my life. Something's still coming. It wasn't this. Something's still coming, and I won't be there to greet it, let alone stop it." He leaned his head against the wall and looked up. "And the worst of it is, I can't even stop this. I can't even slow it down. It's tearing the universe apart and sewing together seconds that were never meant to touch. That won't hold, you see, so whatever else is coming to fill the gaps will come, and no one will be the wiser."

"Except you, of course," surmised Zoey, having heard enough of Dr. Smith's ramblings by now to know where he was going with this.

He turned his head to look at her. "Not this time," he admitted quietly. "No free passes out of this one. I don't even get to sit out. We all have to play to the end." He took a few steadying breaths. "Can't say I know how long the game will last, though."

Zoey snorted. "Please. I know from experience that you're horrendously difficult to kill. If I thought your stupid cracks could do it, we wouldn't be having this conversation; I'd be sitting back for the show."

Dr. Smith tried to give her a smile, but even she could see through it. It looked more like a grimace than anything else anyway. "Even if things do change in my past," he said, "you'll still go before I do." He must have seen the look on her face because he added, "Simple, really. I've lived longer. I've seen more and done more than you. It'll take some time to rip me from existence."

Zoey frowned at him. "Well, if that's what's happening to you now, I can't see how you're supposed to outlast me."

The smile, if it could even be called that, became more ragged. "It'll be quicker for you. I've got more than a few knots in my timeline that have to be undone. It'll take a while."

"Especially since you're trying to hold yourself together?"

"Well, yes," Dr. Smith agreed, looking surprised that she had recalled that. He probably thought she didn't listen to a word he said. Normally, she didn't—she left the likes of that to Thames if she could—but she was trying to screen through the nonsense now to get to something she could actually use.

It was slow going.

"But the thing is, I'm coming apart at the seams," Dr. Smith continued. "Unless things change, the very thing that is supposed to be holding me together no longer exists. I'll be unravelling from both ends." He sucked in a breath. "Should go quicker, then."

"I'm thrilled," Zoey said, rolling her eyes. "Is that your excuse as to why you aren't trying to get us out of here?"

Dr. Smith started to laugh, but it quickly turned into a sputtering cough. When he recovered, he shook his head. "No point in trying to get out anymore," he said. "Not really. There's no place to go. There's nowhere safe. Nothing's untouched. Everything falls to the ravages of time. You ought to know that better than the average person." He looked upwards again, craning his neck back, the top of his head pressed against the wall, peering at the ceiling as if he could see through it and all the floors above them to the sky. After a moment of blessed silence, he said, "I think we might be lucky."

"Good," Zoey said. "Try using some of that luck to unlock that door. I don't care if I can't go anywhere safe so long as I'm not stuck here with the likes of you."

Dr. Smith looked at her again. "That's not what I mean," he said. "I think there'll be something after this. I don't think we'll get nothing. Well, not nothing for long. The replacement timeline is trying to force itself through. Won't be pretty, and won't be pleasant, and it certainly won't have all the details the same even if some of the facts still seem correct, but I think something might exist for everyone else."

"Lovely."

"Thing is," Dr. Smith continued carefully, "my time's still up."

"Splendid. Then maybe someone _else_ can let me out of here."

Dr. Smith shook his head. "No. I'm sorry, Zoey. Really, I am. Even for you, even when you're pushing away so much good potential in search of something else, even when you're delighting in all the havoc you wreak through this Project and all the harm and violence and destruction you spread. I am really very, very sorry. But you're too close to me."

Zoey stiffened, stamping down on the flash of fear that threatened to rise and consume her. "Meaning?" she ground out darkly.

"You weren't cut when you touched me," Dr. Smith explained slowly, "but you will be if splinters fly, and even if they don't, there's too much friction between the two of us for things to go smoothly. Thames and everyone else outside of this room may get rewritten into whatever's coming, but we won't."

Zoey glared at him, knowing that even in his near-delusional state that he wouldn't mistake the loathing on her face for anything but what it was.

"I'm sorry," Dr. Smith repeated. "I am so, so sorry. But I can't give you a choice. I literally can't. There's absolutely nothing that I can do." He sagged against the wall. "What would you do," he asked quietly, "if you had a choice?"

Zoey knew precisely what she would do, choice or no. She started with a good slap that sent Dr. Smith crashing painfully to the floor. "I wish you'd never stepped foot inside this Project," she hissed. "You, with your lies and your promises and your idiotic visions of grandeur, thinking yourself better than all of us. You're the cause of this. You're the reason we're here, the reason we're in this mess. Tell me this, _Dr. Smith_. What would have happened if you'd never come into our lives?"

Dr. Smith pulled himself to his feet again. Facing her, he said, very quietly, "This would have happened sooner, and you would never have known about it." Turning away from her, he added, more to himself than to her, "But if I'd never met Sam, it could have been prevented altogether." He sighed and turned back to her. "Trouble is, that's been done. It might be becoming _un_done, but it has been done, and _I_ certainly can't change it. It's all a sequence, Zoey, but the timing's off, and things aren't in place, and the pattern's cracked and the patches are worn through and everything's falling to pieces."

"So you're admitting that this mess is entirely your fault," Zoey deduced, ignoring another spasm of pain as it shook Dr. Smith. She leaned closer to him. "_Fix it_."

"I _can't_!" Dr. Smith retorted. "That's what I've been saying all along. I can't do _anything_." His voice cracked, and he fell silent at last. Zoey turned her back on him.

She lost track of time. Her watch had long since stopped, and she wasn't sure whether it lent credence to Dr. Smith's ridiculous story or whether it was just plain coincidence. She refused to meet Dr. Smith's gaze, and he didn't bother trying to make any further conversation. This silence was a different silence from the times she'd had him in the Holding Chamber. She'd been in control, then, letting the silence stretch between her questions. Now, neither of them had control.

The silence stretched on, broken only by Dr. Smith's occasional hisses of pain or explosions of breath as he lost control of whatever he'd been fighting against. That part was no different from the time in the Holding Chamber, at least.

The difference came later, when Dr. Smith began screaming, curled tightly in a ball, hands clamped to his head.

Zoey closed her eyes. Normally, she liked that sound. But it was no signal of her control of the situation now; it was quite the opposite. And this…. It didn't sound human, that tortured, chilling sound that issued from Dr. Smith's mouth. Pain and horror and who knew what else bursting forth in a torrent of sound that never seemed to stop.

When it finally did, Zoey actually got to her feet to check on him. His screams still echoed in her ears, hammering against her skull, giving her a headache. She tried to ignore it, instead turning her attention to Dr. Smith.

He didn't move, and when she pushed him onto his back, he just lay there. He didn't even twitch. She was experienced enough to know that he wasn't even breathing.

She'd wanted him dead. She'd been cursing him since the day he'd left the Project. Before that, even—since the time she'd had him in the Holding Chamber and he'd refused to talk. She hadn't been able to break him, and she'd hated him for it. She still did. But now…she didn't have to.

Zoey shivered, suddenly realizing that the room was darkening again, the temperature dropping. Everything had been cut off again with her luck. Well, Dr. Smith was right about that, at least. They were stuck. But he'd been wrong about her. She'd outlasted him. She'd had the last laugh.

It was a bitter one.


	14. Chapter 14

Alia sat bolt upright in bed, her heart fluttering in her chest, startled out of her sleep by a dream she could no longer remember. It was a while before she could hear above the pounding in her ears and breathe easily again. By that time, she could remember where she was. It had been so disorienting at first. Her dream, whatever it had been, had seemed so _real_. She knew it had, even if she couldn't quite recall it now. It made her feel unsettled.

It was early, but she knew she wouldn't be able to get back to sleep any time soon. At least today was a Saturday, so she wouldn't have to go off to work. Not that she minded work; as a reporter for the _Millbrook Gazette_, she at least had a steady income, but her last story had been talking to Bill Rivers, a retired physics teacher from the local school who'd just turned seventy, about his view of how education had been changing over the years. She'd found what he'd told her _off_ the record far more interesting than the dynamics of the educational system. He'd told one tale in particular that had made her wonder just how serious he'd been taking the interview, but it had gotten her wondering about how impossible the impossible truly was.

She was being silly, and she knew it. She shouldn't be wasting her time chasing dreams, but she couldn't seem to stop herself. She'd been trying, over the past few days, to remember what she'd been dreaming about. Certain things, ordinary things, would trigger a flash of memory. Alone, they never made any sense; together, they made even less.

She'd been at the market the other day and had involuntarily shuddered when she'd caught sight of the cashier's nametag, which had cheerfully proclaimed its wearer to be Zoey. When she'd looked over her articles for the newspaper, she couldn't remember writing them. When she was supposed to be doing more research, turning up new stories, she instead found herself staring at the clock, watching it tick off the seconds and feeling that she knew that they weren't gone forever, not for her—just for everyone else. And, since she'd starting having those dreams, she couldn't seem to look in a mirror—or any reflective surface, for that matter—without being the tiniest bit surprised that she could see herself in it.

"I think I'm cracking up," Alia admitted quietly—but even that admission brought with it a flash of fear that didn't quite fit, one that was related to the idea of _cracking_ itself as opposed to the concept that she might very well be losing her mind.

She made herself a cup of tea and sat curled in her living room chair, staring out the window. The sun was just beginning to stain the clouds a glorious orange, bright and vibrant. She turned her thoughts back to her dream; she'd been talking to someone, she was sure. If she could just remember a name—

But what would it help, even if she _did_ recall a name? It would only be invented. It wouldn't matter one whit.

Except…except she couldn't quite bring herself to believe that. It had been the same dream, she was certain of it. At the very least, the ending had been the same. The cracking, the flash of fear at that realization—but _what_ had been cracking? And who had been with her? Not Zoey, whoever that was. She knew that, even if she couldn't explain it. It had been someone else.

Her tea grew cold, the clouds lost their colour, and the world was awake.

Alia sighed and shuffled back to her bedroom to change. Today might be Saturday, and she might technically be off work, but she was going to meet Brian Collins over coffee today to do an interview—a follow-up of sorts to her interview with Bill. Brian was his replacement, taking on both physics and biology, and though this wasn't his first teaching job, he had a different view of the quality of today's education. He'd spent long enough in the education system himself, if she understood correctly. He'd dropped out of medical school. She remembered him telling her about his friends' reactions—Grace and Marie and Andrew—

Andrew.

Andrew Milton.

In her dream, she'd been with Andrew Milton. Back when he was in university, when they were both in university, in med school— Alia frowned. That made no sense; she'd never had any desire to go to med school. And anyway, she hadn't even taken journalism in San Francisco, let alone been in the same year as him.

But dreams, Alia reasoned, didn't _have_ to make sense, and often didn't. Perhaps if she just accepted it as it was, and thought back to it—not concentrating, exactly, but guiding a wandering mind—she might turn up a bit more. She could give it time. This morning had been the fifth one in a row where she'd woken in such a state, and her impressions of the elusive dream had been growing stronger. If she gave it time, she might finally get answers.

Ten minutes later found her at her computer, eating breakfast at her desk and trying to find out what had happened to Andrew Milton. She couldn't be sure that she'd found the right person, but when she came across a reference to a cardiologist, something sparked her memory, something that told her she had found a trace of the right person, and she looked into it further. Then, she came across his obituary.

He had been in a car accident four years ago and had passed away in the hospital the following day.

He'd done so much in his career, and he'd held so much promise, and then it was all snuffed out. Drunk driver. A teenager. One who had made it out with hardly a physical scratch. But the mental scarring, Alia bet bitterly, would have been more painful than anything else.

She was almost afraid to look up anyone else, but she did. She couldn't recall Marie's last name, but Grace's was on the tip of her tongue, and if she just thought for a moment, she'd be able to find it. Dr. Grace…Dr. Grace…something. A cardiologist, too, she remembered. The very best.

Why did she know that?

"Holloway. Dr. Grace Holloway," Alia said to herself. Brian must have told her. Yes, that was it. Had to be.

Dr. Grace Holloway was indeed the finest cardiologist in California, probably in the country. Worked out of San Francisco. She had various awards and recognitions and everything else, and her life seemed perfectly fine.

Well, at least until New Year's Eve.

Alia froze. The new year—the new millennium—was still a couple of months off yet. Why had she thought that? She didn't buy into all of that Y2K paranoia herself. Why think that things were going to change on that night for Grace Holloway? She didn't even know the woman. She'd never met her before in her life. They knew a mutual friend, that's all. Brian Collins. That's it. Nothing else. Nada. Nil. Zip. Zilch.

"I'm losing it," Alia murmured, shutting down her computer. Perhaps she ought to cancel on Brian. She clearly wasn't in the right frame of mind to talk to anyone. Indulging in fantasies, chasing stupid dreams and trying to fill them with meaning, was just making things worse for her. Work would give her grounding, yes, normally, but sometimes it wasn't easy to keep an interview from becoming conversation when it was between two friends, and she didn't need to have to stop herself from blurting out something stupid about Brian's university friends in the middle of it all.

Sometimes she could keep secrets. She was really quite good at it, actually. But sometimes…sometimes she just let things slip. Not often, but it still happened.

Sam hadn't kept his secrets as close as she had.

Alia squeezed her eyes shut. A wandering mind was one thing, but why did it keep coming up with things she didn't recognize? Dreams were just _dreams_. A name didn't have to mean anything. And this Sam could be just as imagined as the New Year's Eve danger.

Rather reluctantly, Alia opened her eyes and looked at her computer. When she thought about it, she could remember a bit more about this Sam. Dr. Sam Beckett. A leaper—a time traveller. She knew what it meant, leaping, but she didn't quite understand the terminology and why it was called that. Not now, not on the surface. Beneath the surface, in her dreams, she knew it all too well, but now? Now, she wasn't sure if she ought to be happy that she'd forgotten or not.

She turned her computer back on, connected to the Internet again, and started searching.

* * *

><p>Alia didn't keep her appointment with Brian. Instead, she booked a plane ticket to New Mexico. It wasn't logical. Things would definitely be tight in the next couple of months, but she was willing to give anything to get some answers and some peace, and she had the feeling that Dr. Beckett may be able to give that to her.<p>

She didn't know, entirely, where he was. She'd kept hitting government barriers whenever she tried looking into his research. Nevertheless, she'd called in every favour and pulled every string she could think of, and now she was heading off on what was probably some wild goose chase. But a lead was a lead, even if it was vague, and it was all she had. If she could just track down this Admiral Al Calavicci, she'd be able to find Sam Beckett, and Al Calavicci was known to be a bit of a ladies' man, fond of drink and smoke and a sucker for a good-looking gal.

Alia had dressed for the part, and she was determined to find another lead before the day—or rather, the night—was out. She knew Al frequented major centres, but she wasn't sure where, not yet. She visited bars, asked questions, accepted a few drinks, and gathered all the information she could. She'd known what he looked like, this Al—she'd found a photograph on the Internet, something relating to his time spent as a POW in Vietnam—but after a few hours, she'd learned the names of his favourite haunts in the city.

That she literally ran into him on her way into the third bar was the best luck she'd had in years.

That he wasn't with anyone else was another sign that someone up there was taking a shine to her strange endeavour.

Alia smiled politely, made her apologies, and started to turn away. She hesitated, turned back, and took a better look at the admiral. She smiled again, this time conveying something quite different from politeness, and hooked her arm in Al's. "You don't happen to know someplace better than that little old place, do you?"

Al hesitated, looking torn, and finally shook his head. "If it were any other time…."

"You've got work?" Alia guessed. With someone else, she might've suggested skipping out anyhow, but she knew things would be different with Al. No matter what happened, he'd be at work, if he could be. "I can wait. I can be quiet as a mouse."

"Look, uh—"

"Alia."

"Alia?" Al repeated, and he looked at her again, more closely this time. He opened his mouth, but this time nothing came out.

Alia pulled back from him now. "What?" she asked.

"You're Alia? I just…. I didn't think…. Oh, god, it really _is_ you—"

"What? What are you talking about?" Alia asked, but she had a feeling she knew already: they had been having dreams as well.

No, no, she was being silly. That wasn't possible, and if it were, it wouldn't mean anything. She was just overreacting.

Yeah. Overreacting. Like when she'd listened to her dreams and the voice in her head long enough to jump on a plane and end up out here anyway. Oh, god. She really _was_ going crazy.

"I didn't believe Sam until I went over the records," Al was saying as he guided her towards his car. It was a beauty, she knew just from looking at it; top of the line, if not an experimental model. But she didn't have time to appreciate it. She was getting what she wanted, yes, to go to Sam's project, but now that it was happening, she was all too aware that she hadn't thought this through.

How the hell had they known about _her_?

"It's not that there's anything definite," Al continued. "Ziggy can't pinpoint what's wrong, what happened. There's something missing, but she just can't find it. We don't even know exactly what it is. But you—your name came up. Alia. And, lord, now that I see you, I _recognize _you, even though I've never seen you before in my life."

Al turned to look at her in the passenger seat, where she sat completely dumbfounded. She'd been expecting to cajole her way in, not to be invited because they knew who she was! How could they possibly know who she was? "You all right?" Al asked.

"How do you know who I am?" Alia finally asked.

"I told you. Sam remembered you. I don't know what triggered it, but he did. And we looked. Ziggy searched…. I don't know what she searched. Everything. It's conspicuous by its absence. I'm going with Sam on this, especially now that you've turned up."

"Sam Beckett?" Alia asked carefully. "Dr. Beckett?"

Al gave her a searching look. "Yes, Sam Beckett. How many other Sams do you know? No, wait, don't answer that. You've probably met plenty." Under his breath, he added, "For all I know, you've probably been plenty."

"What?" Alia wasn't even going to take a guess at what that last comment had meant.

"Well, you're a leaper, aren't you?" Al stopped, frowned, and said, "No, wait, if you're a leaper, how come you look like you? How come you're _here_?"

Alia took a breath. She was going to have to tell them sometime, anyway. "I've been having these…dreams."

"Dreams?" Al repeated. "Whaddaya mean, _dreams_?"

"I mean _dreams_," Alia answered stiffly. "I just…. I don't know. Sam, he's, um, in them. Not most of them. But…. I know his name, and I know about your Project, and I've had loads of other crazy dreams and I started looking up the names once I remembered them and they're real people and I know I sound crazy but—" Alia broke off. "But it's true," she finished weakly.

"Sam said you're a leaper, like him," Al said.

Alia shook her head. "I'm a journalist. Just a small town newspaper, nothing really important. The _Millbrook Gazette_."

Al nearly choked on his cigar. Once he'd finished his coughing fit, he repeated, "The _Millbrook Gazette_? As in Millbrook, Connecticut?"

Alia nodded uncertainly.

"Sam was there, a few months back. He leaped into Bill Rivers."

"The retired physics teacher?" Alia asked, surprised. She recalled some of Bill's stories and suddenly didn't feel quite so surprised. "Oh, then all of that—"

"Something went wrong," Al said, interrupting. "That leap—nothing was right off the start. It was like Sam wasn't supposed to be there. It took Ziggy ages to figure out a scenario. We were nearly too late."

Alia swallowed. "What happened?"

"It was a bit of a mess," Al admitted, "but Sam got out of it, and that's all that matters."

Alia couldn't bring herself to say anything. Too many thoughts were plaguing her head. The more Al said, the more her fragmented recollections of her dreams made sense. But they _couldn't_ make sense. She _had_ a life. A real life, not just— Why couldn't dreams just remain dreams?

"I don't get it," Alia finally burst out. "If this isn't me, if I'm supposed to be like Sam, why aren't I? Why aren't I leaping like he is? What happened?"

"Ziggy's working on it," Al said. "We're almost there. See that mountain?" He pointed up ahead of them.

"What does Sam say?"

Al didn't answer her.

"Telling me what Ziggy says doesn't mean anything," Alia said. "I don't even know who that is. But Sam…. I remember Sam. From my dreams. I trust him. What does he say?"

"There was another Project," Al answered at last, "and you were their leaper."

Alia bit her lip. "So what happened? Why aren't I there any more?"

"We don't know. We didn't even know that anything was wrong until Sam…."

"Until Sam what?"

"We were in the middle of a leap. Run-of-the-mill type leap, nothing unusual. And he just…. He said something was wrong. That it didn't happen this way the first time. I didn't understand him at first; we were changing the original history, righting what had gone wrong, but…."

"But that's not what he meant," Alia concluded. "I was supposed to be there, but I wasn't, because something else changed, something that wasn't Sam's doing." She swallowed. "Or mine," she added in a whisper, trying not to admit that her life was a lie.

"We don't know a lot," Al told her quietly. "Sam's Swiss-cheesed. It's hard enough for him to keep the past and present straight, let alone anything that's changed. I never knew he remembered the changes before. I didn't think he did."

"He wouldn't," Alia said. "Time's got these…levels. And when they shift, we only remember what's on top. He shouldn't have remembered. No one should have. And I shouldn't be having these dreams."

"How do you know that?"

Alia stared resolutely out the window as the desert countryside flashed by. "My dreams."

* * *

><p>Alia stood in the Control Room under the scrutiny of Al and the parallel-hybrid computer, Ziggy, along with three other people she hadn't known about—Donna, Tina, and Gooshie. She'd explained her dreams, or what little sense she could make of them. She talked about everything from her irrational fear of the cracking to how she'd tracked them down in the first place.<p>

Donna was the one to break the silence. She turned to Al. "You should tell Sam," she said quietly. "He deserves to know what we know."

"Dr. Beckett may be able to see some connections that we haven't," Gooshie added. "He was, after all, the one to alert us to Alia's existence in the first place."

"A different existence," Tina argued. "One where _she's_ against _us_." She looked back at Alia then and sighed. "Suppose it's not your fault. You didn't kill him when you had the chance, according to Sam."

"Why would I kill him?" Alia whispered, but she already knew the answer. She closed her eyes so she couldn't see the looks the others exchanged. She didn't _want_ that life back. It was horrible.

But it was real.

But so was this. If it wasn't, what else could it be? This had to be real. Everything else was just a dream. Just a stupid dream, one that plagued her and wouldn't leave her alone and…and which came true. She hadn't dreamed about any of this, but her recollections of Sam were truth, and she'd never met him before in her life.

Not in this life, anyway.

Al offered to let her come with him to the Imaging Chamber. Though he'd warned her she wouldn't be able to see or hear anything, he could still be a go-between for her and Sam. She'd turned him down. She just needed to think. She didn't want to stay with the others, either; they made her uncomfortable. She just wanted to be alone.

That didn't happen. She was cornered by someone else who introduced herself as Dr. Verbeena Beeks. Alia didn't need to ask who she was. She had a feeling she knew. It wasn't with the same certainty that had told her Sam was real, but she knew Verbeena Beeks's job at Project Quantum Leap as surely as she knew her own name. She could spot her a mile away.

"Why don't we talk in my office?" Verbeena suggested, leading Alia through the maze of corridors. Alia couldn't find it in her heart to protest.

The questioning wasn't precisely what Alia expected. Verbeena was kind, but still probed her for knowledge. Alia didn't have to repeat herself, exactly, though she did expand on a few things. Ziggy had apparently kept Verbeena informed via a video link to the Control Room, which is how Verbeena had known when to leave her office to intercept Alia as she'd been wandering off in search of solitude.

"How can this not be real?" Alia finally asked. The question wouldn't leave her alone. "How can this not be my life?"

"It is your life," Verbeena answered simply, "and it is quite real, I assure you."

Alia shook her head. "It's not. It can't be. My dreams—"

"Are, if I understand correctly, showing you something that once was or could have been. In either case, your life now is real, Alia. It's as real as mine, as real as anyone else's. You're still you."

Alia shook her head. "But I can't be. Not if I…. What I remember doing in the dreams…. I can't do that. I couldn't."

"Some people believe in fate," Verbeena said. "Some believe that that is what is leaping Sam around—Fate. Others don't believe in fate. The choices we make, they would argue, are _not_ preordained. We can choose our own destinies; they aren't set in stone. What do you think?"

Alia stared at her hands in her lap. "I don't know anymore. I don't know anything. Before I started having these dreams, before I started remembering whatever it is I'm remembering, the world made sense, but now it doesn't."

"What your dreams showed you," Verbeena explained, "is where your life could have led under a different set of circumstances, of choices and opportunities."

"No," Alia said, though she wasn't sure why she was so certain. "No, that's not it. That was my life. This life is under different circumstances and everything else. Those dreams are of where my life had led, originally." She tried to laugh. "It's like when Sam leaps, I suppose. History rewrites itself. Like it did back when I was leaping, too."

She didn't know what she was talking about, really. She probably didn't even have the terminology right. Sam would; he was a genius and, near as she could tell, so was everyone else who worked at Project Quantum Leap. That's not to say they didn't have their quirks—from what she'd seen, they had quite a lot of them—or that they were good at everything, but they each had their own area of expertise. They all belonged, and not just because of their work. They acted like a family. They defended each other, and especially Sam, as if they were a family.

She missed that sense of belonging, but in truth, she wasn't sure that she'd ever really had it.

Verbeena tried to continue the conversation, but Alia's heart wasn't in it. She finally shook her head and stood up. "Is there somewhere I can go to rest? It's been a long day." It wasn't a lie. She _was_ tired. She just happened to be more mentally exhausted than physically exhausted.

Verbeena nodded, seeming to understand. "Come with me; I'll make sure you have everything you need."

Alia may not have been able to deny her weariness, but she wasn't looking forward to sleeping. She wanted rest, but she wasn't convinced she could get it. She was almost dreading falling asleep. Her dreams had been holding too many horrors lately, and she feared unleashing them. Those dreams held terrible truths, truths that were becoming clearer to her now, growing ever more substantial as time went on.

She didn't want to know what she'd done in another life, what choices she had made then or why. She feared that she might still make them, the very same way, if put in the same situation. All she really knew was the fear that gripped her so tightly that she woke; she didn't know what caused it.

She was also afraid that she was going to remember soon.

"Have a good sleep," Verbeena said once Alia was settled in a dorm that was nestled on another floor. She got the impression that it was used whenever the staff was so swamped with work they only caught an hour or two of sleep at a time.

She supposed it was better than sleeping at their desks. She'd done that, once or twice, and it was never very comfortable.

Or had she even _ever_ done that? How much of her life was real? It couldn't be everything; if her dreams held memories that were just as real, they both couldn't exist.

She never was any good at sorting this sort of thing out.

"I'll try," Alia whispered in answer, settling herself on the mattress as Verbeena turned the lights off and left. A crack of light shone from beneath the crack in the door. It was an ordinary door, not like the rest of the ones in the facility. It had a normal doorknob, and hinges, and opened on one side. You could still lock it, but it was a safety precaution; they could still get out if the power failed. They wouldn't be trapped.

The thought was comforting, but the mattress wasn't terribly comfortable, all things considered, though it was better than sleeping at a desk. Maybe she'd get lucky and it would mean she wouldn't fall into such a deep sleep that she did have so many dreams, or perhaps she would be able to wake up before something terrible happened to wake her up. Then again, maybe she'd just have a horrible time trying to rest anyway, no matter how tired she was.

No matter. She had to try. Even if she didn't get much sleep, she needed something. Alia rolled over, facing into the darkness, and closed her eyes, trying to keep her thoughts from running off and keeping her awake. She just needed to clear her head. Things would look better after she got some rest, even if it was only for an hour or two. They had to look better.

They couldn't very well look any worse.

* * *

><p>AN: Thanks to those who take the time to review, and, Questfan, before you ask, Sam will show up soon (though not necessarily in the next chapter).


	15. Chapter 15

It was distinctly cool. Not horribly chilly, but just this side of unpleasant—even for him. The Doctor slowly opened his eyes. It wasn't bright by any means, but it wasn't pitch black, either. He could still make things out; he could even see Zoey leaning against the far wall. The air seemed a bit stale, but he'd breathed far worse.

He had a splitting headache, but he _seemed_ to be in one piece.

The Doctor ran his tongue over his teeth and smiled. He was even in the _same_ one piece as he had been before.

Mind you, something was still…off.

It took a moment for him to work it out. Time wasn't standing still, exactly. It was still moving on, at least for everyone else. It just happened to be moving around them, as if they were a rock that was cutting through the current of a river, forcing it to redirect itself, flowing around either side of the rock before resuming its original path. The little bit of time they had trapped in here with them was slowly being worn away by the river, but in the meantime, it was still here, keeping them alive. They'd been caught in stasis for the time being, with a bit of air and heat and light and whatever else they needed. The cracking hadn't killed them, or at least it hadn't killed them yet, and this wouldn't, either. They'd have to worry about what would happen when the time that was caught in here with them was broken down and swept away by the current.

They were isolated, cut off from everything else. Even if he tried, he wouldn't be able to determine the extent of the damage or see how long they had before they felt the final effects of the cracking. He could guess at the state of things elsewhere, elsewhen, but he had no way of knowing if his guesses were right or not.

That was perhaps just as well. It meant he could think, at least. Every single cell wasn't aching, every nerve screaming at him and crying out at the destruction of the torn timeline. Headache aside, he was feeling much better than he had been. "Question is," the Doctor murmured, "why? I shouldn't be."

He shouldn't even still be around, much less be awake and feeling better.

Then again, maybe it wasn't so much of a surprise after all, considering where he thought they were. It wasn't necessarily too difficult to determine why, either, if he put his mind to it. As he'd told Alia, his life was complicated. And what he _did_ with it was nearly opposite to what Zoey was trying to do with Alia. Bringing the two of them together would have created more than a bit of temporal friction. Unlike Alia, Zoey didn't appear to care the slightest about anyone else. She certainly wouldn't have let Sam go as Alia had.

That difference was one of the reasons Alia would eventually escape.

The Doctor got to his feet and walked over to Zoey. Kneeling down, he shook her, and she stirred. "You all right?" he asked as she came around.

"I expect I'm better than you," Zoey responded tartly, apparently unwilling to admit that she felt as awful as she looked. And she really didn't look good, not at all her usual self, even if she did keep her tongue. She appeared to be recovering for the ordeal remarkably well. Granted, he wasn't entirely sure what she'd gone through. There was little doubt in his mind that things had been more painful for him—he'd been fighting against being torn apart, after all—but he'd guess that Zoey could handle pain about as well as she dealt it out, and that was saying something. He could respect her for that, if nothing else.

"Considering the racket you were making," Zoey said, ignoring his helping hand and getting to her feet by herself, "I'm surprised you're standing."

"I'm resilient," the Doctor replied. Noticing Zoey shiver, he took off his suit jacket and offered it to her. "Here. We'll be here a while."

She glared at him and made no move to take it. "I'm quite all right, thank you very much."

The Doctor shook his head. "No, you're not. Even _I_ will admit that it's a tad cool in here. If you can keep warm, you'll keep your strength up."

"And why would you care?"

The Doctor just looked at her for a moment and then draped the jacket around her shoulders. She made no effort to shrug it off, though she pointedly did not wrap it around her. Spotting his sonic screwdriver on the floor, he went over to pick it up and began checking various readings, standing in the middle of the room and rotating slowly on his heels. "You know," he said eventually, "I think we're lucky." He'd said as much before, but it certainly bore repeating.

"Splendid," Zoey said bluntly. "Then how about getting us out of here?"

"I don't know if I can," the Doctor admitted.

Zoey didn't look impressed by this news. "Try."

The Doctor looked at the readings, frowned, and then slipped the sonic screwdriver into the pocket of his trousers. It wasn't going to help him now. He looked back up at Zoey. "You really don't understand," he said.

"Then for heaven's sake, explain it to me," Zoey snapped.

The Doctor smiled a bit at her words, but quickly schooled his expression under her icy glare. "The timeline was cracking, I said, and things were unravelling. You remember that, I expect?" She nodded, irritated, and he continued, "But here, right here, in this room, we were…caught."

"Caught?" Zoey repeated. Her tone told him, quite clearly, that she was even more annoyed with him now than when he'd first opened his mouth.

"Look," the Doctor told her quietly, "near as I can tell, we were the first ones to go, so we'll be the last to return, providing we survive it in the first place. Two types of time travel warring with one another, with me trying to patch the cracks and you trying to pry them open? We're a nasty little knot to digest on _this_ string. That'll take time, and there's no telling how we'll come out of it, if at all."

Zoey glared at him. "What's your point?" she demanded.

"Alia's out there," the Doctor said, "and you're the only connection I've got to her."

"Use the handlink again," Zoey said sourly.

The Doctor shook his head. "No, you don't understand. That's not going to work. Right now, this Project doesn't exist, not on the surface. We're caught in limbo. I can't rely on a computer connection through the handlink."

"The only reason Alia and I are connected is because of this Project, Dr. Smith," Zoey returned. "If it doesn't exist, neither does the connection."

"Ah, but that's where you're wrong," the Doctor said. "This Project will still exist, but not out there, not yet, not until things are sorted out. It'll be here, underneath and in between, and that connection of yours might be thin, but it won't be broken. Can't be. It's not purely electronic. You swapped a few neurons and mesons with Alia, didn't you?" It wasn't something that had been done at Sam's project—well, not until Sam and Al had swapped places, since before that, matching brainwave patterns had been sufficient—but he'd spent enough time at this particular project to know that things had been a bit more…unconventional. They'd been desperate. He hadn't expected that these things would ever work in his favour, but there you had it.

Zoey's response, however, left something to be desired. "Oh, please don't assume you know everything, Dr. Smith. It's terribly tiresome."

The Doctor's face blanched. "You _did_ swap those neurons and mesons, right? When you implanted the chip? Oh, _tell_ me you still did it. Intentionally, unintentionally, accidental contamination, it doesn't matter, but please tell me you two have swapped a bit of the ol' grey matter. It's the only thing I can think of to hold us together."

Zoey rolled her eyes. "You're asking questions you know the answer to. Just get to the point."

The Doctor breathed a sigh of relief. "Look, I can use that connection to talk to Alia. Not very well, and not for very long. I won't have a lot of control. But so long as you have a bit of her in you, I can get to the rest." He paused. "That is, if you'll let me."

Zoey crossed her arms. "And if I don't?"

"Then you might as well sit down. I don't know how painful our reinstatement is going to be, and I'd hate to have to show you up by showing you more hospitality than you did me."

"How long will this take?"

"I don't know. It's not something I've done before. Even _I_ don't go around messing about with the timeline like this." The Doctor stuffed his hands in his pockets. "To be honest, I don't know if it'll work. I don't even know if there's anything out there outside of this room. All I know is that you and me, Zoey, are caught in limbo, trapped out of time while it figures out what to do with us and how to fit us in, and all the while we have to hope desperately that we aren't too complicated to be inserted into whatever's taken place as reality. But Alia wasn't at the Project, so she'll be fit in somewhere, filling a random place in time, unimportant and unassuming. She's enough of an anomaly as it is; she can't get her proper place, what she would have had if she'd never come here or what she would have if she ever manages to escape. Not like Sam; Sam's _in_ his proper place, and so is his Project." The Doctor caught sight of Zoey's face and grinned. "Oh, yes! His Project's still around, right enough. No need to change it. He wasn't trying to pry any cracks open, was he? And he wasn't deliberately trying to close them, either, not like me; he hasn't any idea how. He's neutral in all this, and as such, he comes out of it just the same. Well, he should. Don't know for certain, but if it follows the pattern, he'll be fine."

Zoey's lips thinned, but she didn't comment on that. Instead, she said, "Fine. Get in touch with Alia, and get us out of here."

"It might take a while," the Doctor warned her, "and I don't know if it'll work. I'll have to strengthen the connection before it's strong enough for me to bridge the gap."

"Just get on with it. I don't want to be here forever."

"Well," the Doctor said, drawing his hands out of his pockets, "we won't be here forever. We'll either be put back or wiped out. Either way, you're not going to remember this once that happens, however long it is."

Zoey looked at him suspiciously. "How exactly are you going to do this?"

The Doctor offered her something that was only the mere semblance of a smile. "You like games, Zoey, and you play a fair few mind games of your own. Now, we'll just be playing one of mine." He paused, and added, "But, not to worry. I'll be a lot more gentle than you ever are." And before she could say another word, he placed one hand on either side of her forehead and closed his eyes.

* * *

><p>Alia was disoriented when she woke, though she didn't feel as panicked as she had in the past. It took her a few seconds to get her bearings. She wasn't sure how long she had slept, but when she went out into the corridor to find her way back to everyone she had met earlier, nothing had changed. She wasn't stopped as she made her way back to the tenth level; though she did see guards and other people about, she was always waved on when they spotted her visitor's pass. She made it down to the right floor without difficulty, but she still had trouble finding her way around. She thought about stopping someone, but she was already having second thoughts about coming here, and she didn't want to admit that she'd gotten turned around already.<p>

"Oh, this is brilliant!"

Alia spun around at the sound of the chipper voice. It was a man's, British, and he was standing in the corridor behind her, staring around in delight. He wore a brown pinstriped suit, sans the jacket, with a blue dress shirt and loosened tie. He hadn't looked at her yet; he was too busy grinning about at his surroundings. She couldn't quite see his face, just his profile, but he somehow struck her as familiar.

At the same time, she was convinced she'd never seen him before in her life, and she was pretty sure she'd remember someone who looked like he had more trouble controlling his hair than she did hers. Granted, she was nearly certain he didn't _try_ to control it, but even so. It was memorable, at least for her, and she couldn't recall it.

Not really.

The man turned his grin on her now and waved. "You really are brilliant, aren't you?" he said, the grin becoming even wider and slightly crazier as he realized he'd caught her full attention. "You're one step ahead of me. Came to the right place all by yourself."

He sounded familiar, but she knew she'd never seen him before. She'd remember him if she had. She'd hardly known him for thirty seconds and he didn't strike her as someone she'd forget easily.

"Well," the man continued, amending his earlier words, "not really _all_ by yourself, I suppose. Zoey and I should be able to take some credit. Well, _I_ should be able to take some credit, at least. Well, I _suppose_ I couldn't have done it without her. Well, not easily. Well, not—"

"Who are you?" Alia asked.

"Me?" the man asked, not seeming to notice that she'd interrupted him. "Oh, you're not telling me that you forgot me again, did you?"

"Again?" Alia repeated.

"Well, all right, so you did recall it eventually. I didn't have to tell you. But you still didn't know me right away. Blimey, am I really _that_ easy to forget about? I'd've thought I'd made an impression on you."

Oh. Oh, no. No. No. No, that wasn't possible. She could place his voice now, if not his looks. He didn't belong here. His was the voice that had been narrating her dreams. He didn't fit. He wasn't real.

And yet, there he stood.

She was delusional. She had to be. She'd finally snapped.

Funny. She'd thought it would take longer. This was all rather sudden, wasn't it? Less than a week.

"I'm the Doctor, remember?" the man said, walking up to her.

She backed away, shaking her head. "You can't be here," she said.

The Doctor frowned. "Well, no, I suppose I can't, since if you want to be technical, I'm really not, but, that aside, I am here, plain as day." He paused, then added, "Well, for you, at least."

"Go away," Alia whispered.

The Doctor sighed. "Look, Alia, I don't know how long I can keep this up, and I don't know how many times I can come through." He raked his fingers through his hair. "I need your help."

"No," said Alia. "You're not real."

"Of _course_ I'm real!" the Doctor protested.

"Then go talk to someone else," Alia shot back. "I don't want to help you."

"There's no one else I _can_ talk to," the Doctor complained. "The only reason I can talk to you is because Zoey's here with me. Alia, please. I need you to do something for me, and I wouldn't ask, but there's no other way."

"If I do it," Alia asked carefully, "will you go away?"

"If you do it," the Doctor replied, "I hope to come back. But I won't bother you, no, if that's what you're asking. It's a big universe, and people are hard to find. Especially people like you, people who never stop moving. So if you don't want me to look for you, I won't."

"Alia?"

Alia jerked around, spotting Verbeena Beeks behind her. "You didn't sleep long," the woman continued. "Only a few hours. Is there anything else you need? A glass of water, or—?"

Alia turned her head to look back at the Doctor, but the apparition—or whatever it had been—was gone. "No," she said. "No, I'm fine. Thank you. I'll just…." Alia trailed off. "I need to talk to Al." She bit her lip. "He's still here, isn't it?"

"He's in the Imaging Chamber," Verbeena answered. "He's with Sam, telling him what Ziggy's come up with. You don't need to worry about it." She smiled. "Come on. You can wait in my office. Ziggy can tell Al to join us there."

She wanted the questioning to continue, Alia figured. She supposed there wasn't any harm in it. Verbeena meant well. She just didn't understand. There was no way she could; Alia couldn't understand things herself, much less explain them so anyone else would know what she was talking about.

Then again, Verbeena might be able to explain what she'd seen. She might be able to make sense of what the Doctor had told her. Well, what she'd imagined the Doctor telling her. Whoever the Doctor was.

Alia answered Verbeena's questions as best she could, but finally she asked one of her own questions: "What does Sam remember about me?"

"That you're like him," Verbeena replied quietly. "You're another leaper, or you were, before things changed."

"But what changed?" Alia asked. "Al kept talking about records; don't you know what changed?"

Verbeena shook her head. "If Sam had caused the change, yes, we would know. Ziggy would be able to track it. But this wasn't Sam's doing."

Alia swallowed. "So if I'm supposed to be another leaper, then it's my fault, isn't it? I did this. That's why I remember."

"We don't know," Verbeena said quietly.

"This isn't right," Alia insisted. A week ago, she would have laughed at the notion, but she hadn't been dreaming a week ago. "I…. This _has_ to be my fault. I need to fix it."

"How can you fix something," Verbeena asked softly, "when you don't even know where it's broken? When it doesn't even look broken? You wouldn't know where to start."

"I've already started," Alia pointed out. "I found Al, and I came here. That _is_ a start."

"But you don't know what to do next," Verbeena reminded her. "You're trying to move too quickly."

Alia shook her head. "No, I'm not. I'm not moving quickly enough. There's not a lot of time."

She received a smile now. "Alia, you're at a top secret project which studies time travel. We have all the time in the world."

"Actually," came the Doctor's distinct voice, "you don't. Tell her, Alia."

"What?" Alia twisted around in her seat.

"You don't need to worry about time," Verbeena repeated. She reached out to touch Alia's arm, drawing Alia's attention back to her. "Ziggy will tell us when Al comes; you don't need to look for him."

"That's wrong," the Doctor insisted. He walked around to stand beside Verbeena. "You _do_ need to worry about time. She knows how little control they have over Sam; all she's trying to do is comfort you, and normally that's all well and good, but not now, because time really _is_ running out. Tell her that." He jerked his head towards Verbeena.

Alia stared at him blankly.

"Tell her," the Doctor repeated. "Even though Sam can leap about and touch different times, time is still moving forward. Everything's still happening; it's just happening all at once, not in the nice, neat, little categories of past, present, and future that you try to put it into."

"Alia?" Verbeena asked carefully. "Are you all right?"

"I don't think so," Alia answered quietly, not taking her eyes off the Doctor.

"What's wrong?" Verbeena asked. "You can tell me, Alia."

"I think I'm seeing things," Alia replied.

"You're not _seeing_ things," the Doctor said, sounding indignant. "Do I look like a _thing_ to you?"

"What sorts of things?" Verbeena pressed.

"A person," Alia answered. "He's, well, saying something about time. He says you're wrong. He says we don't have a lot of time." She tore her eyes away from the Doctor and faced Verbeena. "How come I can see him?"

"You're a time traveller, Alia," the Doctor explained. "Things are a bit different for you. Not much; not as much as they could be, under different circumstances, but everything's a bit different nonetheless, and it has been since the moment you stepped into that quantum accelerator. All right, so that's not exactly why you can see _me_, but it's why you remember and why Sam remembers, just a little, just enough." The Doctor paused. "Actually," he added, "I wouldn't be surprised if _Al_ comes up with something, too. He travelled in time. Just the once, and as a result of a mistake, but it would be enough to shift his view, just a little bit." Another pause, then an offended, "Did she just say I'm not real?" He looked accusingly at Verbeena. "I am _too_ real. Why does everyone think I'm just some figment of your imagination?"

"He says he's real," Alia said, deciding that if the Doctor felt so strongly about it she might as well repeat the point. There was always a chance it meant something. "And he said I can remember because I'm different. Me and Sam and even Al, he said. We can remember things because we've travelled in time."

"Al hasn't—" Verbeena broke off. "He hasn't recalled anything," she finished carefully.

Alia shook her head. "No, he has. When I met him and told him who I was, he said he recognized me. I've never seen him before; the only way he could know me would be through Sam, when I was…leaping."

"That's right," the Doctor said. "Once you and Sam touched, it broke down the auras that masked you—just for you two and your observers, mind. Anyone native to the time period would've seen you as whoever you were pretending to be. Even someone _not_ native to the time period, like me, would've still been fooled, at least at first. Al would've seen you then."

Alia stared at the Doctor. "How can you know that?"

"What's he saying?" Verbeena asked.

"I read the files," the Doctor replied. Alia repeated his answer as he continued, "I've been here before, met the crew. Twice, in fact. In person. Well, I suppose it was three times if you're picky. But, that's not important. Think about it, Alia. Think about what you can can't see the levels, not like me, and you only know they're there because I told you—remember that, our little chat? Lovely little chat, that one. Learned plenty, I think, the both of us. But the thing is, Alia, even if you aren't aware of them, you can _sense_ them, if you try. There's that little itch in the back of your mind, the one you ignore because you don't know why it's there, so it can't be important, just another thing you've forgotten—but you're wrong. It's not something you've forgotten. It's a sense of everything else, all those other possibilities, tucked away in your mind because it's too troublesome to pull out and sort through."

Verbeena was frowning. "You shouldn't know all of that," she said once Alia had reiterated the gist of the Doctor's words. "We're not even entirely sure how it works." Her frown deepened. "And you certainly shouldn't know about Al. Even Sam doesn't remember that in its entirety, and if you are somehow remembering pieces of a previous past, Sam could never have told you so much about that time."

"She still doesn't believe you," the Doctor said, answering Alia's unasked questions; he must have seen her about to open her mouth. "She wants to, I'd wager, but she can't. They're used to surprises, doing what they're doing, but a visitor from a currently nonexistent past is a bit of a stretch, even for them." He sighed. "Look, Alia, I meant what I said before. I'm sorry to ask you this, but I need you to help me. I need you to remember, and I need you to help Sam remember."

"What's Sam got to do with this?" Alia asked. Verbeena, for her part, kept quiet, perhaps thinking it was best to listen to one side of a conversation and make observations on it. She could ask her questions later.

"I need him to remember," the Doctor repeated. "When I met him the second time—well, the first time and the third time if I'm going to be technical, but to follow the original timeline, it was the second time I'd met him—he didn't _remember_ the first time I'd met him. And he should. Like I said, he's like you, Alia. It's all still there; it's just buried." There was a pause. "If the two of you can remember, then there's a chance."

Alia stared at him. "How can we remember something that's not real?" she asked finally.

The Doctor shrugged. "Same way you remember a dream. That's all this is, really. It's no less real. Still happened for you and everyone else. Still _is_ happening for me. And that's why I need your help. I'm sort of…stuck."

"Stuck?"

"Well, trapped. Caught out of time, I mean. Literally hanging on by a thread, strung between two different realities. I need a bridge to get back, and you and Sam are the best ones to build it. You've got all the resources you need right here."

"But Sam's _not_ here," Alia pointed out.

"Oh, I know," the Doctor said. "He doesn't need to be _here_ here for this to work. In fact, it's probably _better_ if part of the foundation of this bridge is in the linear past. It'll be stronger that way. And strong is good. It needs to be strong if I'm going to try to invert things. Besides, with you here, I'll be operating on the dormant link between you and this Project anyhow, so your signature should be recognized when the time finally comes for you, and that'll just make sure everything goes smoothly."

"What?" Alia asked. "What are you talking about?"

The Doctor waved the question away. "Oh, you know. Just wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff. It makes a bit more sense now, all those loose ends. I hadn't thought about them too much. I knew they became ordered; I just didn't imagine that this could very well be part of that order. It's the same with Sam's memories, really. He didn't remember the first time he met me because, in order for this to work properly, you need to live, just for a moment, in the past, the _real_ past, the one you're trying to remember, not the one you know now, and conscious recall alone isn't strong enough. That's too easy. So, it was all preparation, a sort of failsafe, you see. Not that I ever expected it would come to this. The fact that things were set up this way _really _makes me wonder. It's not coincidence. Rather puts me in the mind of your whole 'God or Time or Fate or Whatever' bit. Whoever's leaping you about, I mean. Really leaping you about, mind, not just the figurehead or the rubber stamp or the most suitable or believable explanation. It was the same with you, too, you know, once you started leaping. You don't remember your first leap, do you? I was there." The Doctor grinned at her. "I'll bet you don't remember a thing about it, not anymore, not since I spliced the timeline together."

"How would I remember the first time I started leaping," Alia shot back, "if I don't remember leaping at all?"

"Ah, but you _do_," the Doctor countered. "All that stuff with Grace and Andrew? That was your last leap, in your linear timeline." He tapped his temple. "Keeps cropping up. Won't rest. Why? Because this isn't _really_ real. Well, all right, so it _is_ real now, but it's not what should be. And, being a time traveller, you know that. On some unconscious level, you just can't accept that everything always was this way." He gave her another bright grin. "Understand now? That's why you have to help me. We need to put things ba—"

Alia blinked, but the Doctor was gone. He'd just cut out, there one instant and gone the next, as if someone had flicked a switch. She glanced around the room before turning hesitantly back to Verbeena, who was waiting patiently to be informed about Alia's latest conversation. Truthfully, Alia couldn't shake the feeling that Verbeena was just doing her job and humouring her, and she wouldn't be able to find one scrap of fault with it if she discovered that that was all Dr. Beeks _was_ doing.

But surely if she were truly losing her mind, she'd at least be imagining things that made a modicum of sense, wouldn't she?

Alia repeated to Verbeena what she could of her conversation with the Doctor, but she knew talking with her alone wouldn't help. She needed to talk to Al. He was the only way she would be able to talk to Sam, and Sam was the one she really needed to talk to. He might understand.

She might not know him very well—at all, actually, anymore—but she trusted him with her life. He'd been honest with her, hadn't he? He'd tried to help her, she was certain of that. Whatever the reason, she trusted him, and she didn't give trust easily. If she'd trusted Dr. Sam Beckett in another life so strongly that she remembered that trust now, it was easy to put her faith in him again.

* * *

><p>AN: All right, so you all probably saw right through me and knew I was going to do something like this, but I like giving characters a chance. Some people may see that as a flaw, and others might be a bit grateful, but that's the way I am. For now, at least. Oh, and Questfan, I can heartily promise you that Sam will most definitely show up next chapter. I know you asked for that months back, and I'd said I'd get around to it, but it took a little longer than I'd anticipated. Anyway, thanks to everyone who reads and reviews this!


	16. Chapter 16

The Doctor paced the boundaries of the Imaging Chamber, round and round and round again. "The connection's not stable," he muttered, "and I'm losing time every time I try to get through to her. I need to convince her to help me." He stopped and faced Zoey, who had been watching him without comment. "How can I convince her to help me?"

Zoey, to her credit, had stopped trying to figure out how the Doctor had made the connection in the first place, perhaps rightfully accepting it as the only way she was going to get out and knowing from past experience that the self-proclaimed Doctor John Smith never told her anything he didn't want to. "I haven't the faintest, but I imagine that you're going to have an awfully difficult time of it if she doesn't believe you're real," Zoey commented in a rather bored tone.

The Doctor frowned. He was beginning to regret filling Zoey in on everything. Rather than being helpful, like he'd hoped, she'd been extremely unforthcoming. He had the distinct impression that she blamed him for the situation she was in, and he couldn't find fault with that. If she hadn't been caught in here with him, she'd've been happily rewritten somewhere else. Heck, if she'd been out there instead of in here, the entire Project would still exist. This Project, he well knew, would exist fine without him—it had before he'd changed things, after all—but Zoey was too integral a part to remove and expect it not to collapse.

Little changes, however, wouldn't avert the big change. As far as he could tell, all the changes _he'd_ made stood. Well, he'd been able to make contact with Alia at Project Quantum Leap, and everything there had looked the same, so by no means had Earth been destroyed or overtaken in the past, and he'd prevented that enough times. It was unlikely that someone else had managed to fix things up just well enough each and every time that there were no perceptible changes. If his changes still held, he hadn't lost his effect on the timeline. That was comforting. It meant he stood a good chance of remaining in existence or, at the very least, that he'd have a splendidly long time in limbo here with Zoey before the timeline found him indigestible and he was just wiped out, erasing any future changes he might have made but keeping his past ones intact, carefully preserved in the fabric of the new timeline he'd helped to introduce.

He hadn't seen a lot of the future as it would stand in this timeline, but he knew it wasn't good.

Captain Adelaide Brooke had been all too right. What he'd been doing was wrong. But if she didn't _know_ that, because he hadn't been there, but she and Mia and Yuri had still managed to survive, somehow get back to Earth in spite of everything else—he hadn't spent enough time looking at the timeline to yet know how that particular change would take place, but he knew it would, somehow, even if a few of the particulars like the date of arrival changed—if they'd survived, and Adelaide lived, her death wouldn't carry the influence it needed to, and everything would change. This time, that change wouldn't be for the better.

"Alia's too rooted in the new reality," the Doctor said. "She's not meant to be. She's not meant to fit. I keep trying to get her to scratch that itch, that sense that something's wrong, but she's doing an awfully good job ignoring me."

Zoey snorted. "You think she wouldn't? After all her time with us? Did you learn nothing, Dr. Smith, in the time you spent here? If you're right, Alia hasn't lost her training. She's just buried it. She's used to burying things, to ignoring things. That was part of her training. We hardened her. We taught her to ignore the pitiful cries of the weak around her. She had a job to do. We made sure she could do it."

"But she couldn't always do it, could she?" the Doctor asked, looking over at Zoey. "Not when it mattered. Not when it really, really mattered. You tried to have her kill Sam, and she couldn't do it. You tried to bury every last scrap of good inside of her, didn't you, so deep that she'd never find it again? But she did." He started to smile. "Because you can't keep things buried forever, now can you? They come to the surface. And that's just what I need. That's what I'm trying to do. And, believe you me, I will."

"How?" Zoey retorted. "You can't just say you can do something without knowing _how_. You couldn't even get us out of this room. You wouldn't, all because of your precious cracking, and you were too late to stop that."

"Maybe," the Doctor conceded, "but so long as I'm still around, it's not too late. Not this, not now. We've got plenty of time."

"Don't think you can fool me by changing your tune," Zoey snapped. "You've as good as killed us, getting us trapped in here. Do you take me for an idiot, Dr. Smith? I may not know how you found Alia, but I heard every word you said to her. It echoed inside my head. Every minute we spend in here doing nothing is wasted, and we're running out of time."

"Not exactly," the Doctor said, walking over to her. He crouched down in front of her. "Thing is, Zoey, time's not straightforward. You've sent Alia through it, but even though you've experienced it, you still don't understand what time is. You keep saying you've sent her back. I'm probably guilty of saying that myself. But it really isn't _back_ that you've sent her. Past, present, future—it's all mixed together, really. That's why they can so easily influence one another. Haven't you ever noticed that time here runs on the same plane as the time where Alia is? It's the same with Al and Sam, now that things are synched up. The same amount of time passes for Alia when she's on a leap as it does for you. Sure, the time between leaps isn't set, so the length of time she's in transit changes every now and then, but once she's settled, once she's leaped in, you're running parallel. Doesn't that strike you as a bit odd? I mean, this is a time travel project. You should be able to lock onto Alia five minutes before your first visit, but you never do. You can't."

"What's your point?"

"We're not parallel now," the Doctor explained. "Seconds here isn't seconds there, in whatever's taken up its place as the timeline. Right now, Alia's time is running faster than ours. Well, to be technical, time where we are isn't moving at all, but that's beside the point. What I mean to say is that while the seconds are cycling faster for her than for us, it won't necessarily remain that way. We might end up moving faster than she is, and that'll be where our real trouble is if that happens. It'll mean the connection I'm using is breaking, or rather, bent to the breaking point, and if I tried to hold a conversation of any decent length, I'd snap it. The change in the speed of the current would be too much for it. It's not meant to withstand that sort of pressure. It's meant for things to be synched up, so both you and Alia are on the same time." The Doctor blew out a breath. "As it stands now, though, it'll take longer for the connection to break, but it means that if Alia doesn't stay at Sam's Project, we're in a spot of trouble, because I need her there or my plan won't work."

"So you're admitting you have a plan then, are you?"

"Of sorts," the Doctor allowed. "It's a bit rough. I'm still working things out." He paused. "Are you sure you don't know how I could convince her to help me?"

"She was trying to help you last time, wasn't she, before this entire mess?" Zoey asked, though the Doctor suspected she'd been assuming as much. If she'd had any doubt, she only needed to read his expression to know that particular suspicion of hers wasn't unfounded. "She was trying to hide it from us. I didn't know what it was, but if she was trying to help you, that would fit perfectly. If she tried to help you and this is all she got in return, and if she can even have an inkling of that knowledge buried within her as you say she does, what makes you think she would trust you enough to help you again, knowing what can result? Alia doesn't give her trust easily, Dr. Smith. She didn't even before she came here. I hardly think she would have reason to trust you, and without that, she won't have much reason to help you. She doesn't believe she needs to."

"That's why I need your help," the Doctor reminded her gently.

Zoey huffed at him. "She trusts me less than she trusts you."

"But you still know her better than I do."

"Then know this, Dr. Smith. What I said before was true. She doesn't trust me. She doesn't trust you. You won't be able to gain her trust quickly enough. If your idiotic little plan relies on _trust_, it's failed before it even properly began."

"Trust is the foundation of the bridge," the Doctor said. "It can't be built entirely on memory; it wouldn't hold."

"How thrilling," Zoey said sarcastically. "It means we haven't a hope then, have we?"

"I wouldn't say that," the Doctor countered. "We have a means out and time to make that work in our favour, which is a lot more than I thought we'd have. We have a chance; we just need to take it. We've got plenty of hope, or at least plenty of room for it." Besides, it wasn't _wholly_ necessary for Alia to trust him, so long as she trusted someone enough to remember. It would just make everything easier if she trusted him.

"Then I suppose you'd better contact Alia again and tell her all of that."

The Doctor smiled. "Thank you."

"Don't bother thanking me," Zoey muttered. "I'm doing this to save my own skin, not yours."

"Well," the Doctor said as he reached for her temples again, "technically, you're helping me save a lot more than just the two of us, and that's more than I can say for some people I've fought against. So, thanks."

* * *

><p>Alia jumped to her feet when Al entered Dr. Beeks's office. "Al," she asked quickly, "do you know who the Doctor is? Has Sam said anything about him?"<p>

"The Doctor?" Al repeated, looking perplexed. "No. Who's that?" The way Alia had said it, she'd meant someone specific, probably someone unforgettable. Under normal circumstances, at least.

"He said he's someone from before. Before things changed, I mean. I don't know how; I'm the only one who can see him. But he knows about you and Sam and the Project, and he says…he says he needs our help. Mine and Sam's. He says we need to remember, but I'm still not entirely sure what. He said something about one of Sam's leaps, and my first one, but…." Alia trailed off, shaking her head. "Look, I know how this sounds, but I'm not making it up. How else would I know that you travelled in time, Al?"

"What?" Al asked, surprised. "How—?" It's not like Sam remembered that very clearly. _He_ had enough trouble keeping the details straight. If he hadn't read the records, he probably wouldn't've been able to. And now that he knew what it was like to be Swiss-cheesed, he really had to hand it to Sam. Memories were difficult to keep hold of.

"Sam doesn't even remember the details," Dr. Beeks confirmed. "He couldn't have told her. It's not a memory from before." They'd figured out enough, now, to confirm that most things had stayed the same. Ziggy hadn't dug up too many things that didn't really seem to fit. She attributed some things to the anomaly, as she'd begun calling it—she'd even filed a few of Sam's sketchier leaps under that—but for the most part, they still knew next to nothing.

"I know how it sounds," Alia repeated, "but it's true. It's not a glimpse of what once was or whatever these fragments of memory are. It's real. He just…. I don't know, he just appears. There's some sort of connection, but it can't be a very good one, because he keeps getting cut off. Whatever he wants to say, he's not through saying it. I don't understand what he really wants, not any more than what I told you. That's why I was hoping Sam might have an idea. Could you ask him?"

"He was trying to get a cat out of a tree when I left him," Al said, "but I'm sure he wouldn't mind another distraction. Come on. We might as well go now, before something else changes on us."

Al had turned to go, but caught sight of Alia out of the corner of his eye. She'd nearly jumped out of her skin. He was about to comment, but Dr. Beeks beat him to it. "Is the Doctor back?" she asked gently.

Alia nodded. "Yes. Sorry. He just…startled me. He says it's not likely to happen. Something changing, I mean. He says that everything in our past has been processed already." She looked off to one side for a moment before adding, "No, it hasn't been that long at all. Why?" Another pause, then, "So how much time do we have?"

"Maybe we'd better go after all," Al said. He didn't need to be a shrink to read the look on Alia's face. Whatever the reply had been, it hadn't been comforting.

"Suppose we'd better," Alia agreed softly. She nodded her thanks to Dr. Beeks and followed Al to the Imaging Chamber, with a quick stop over in the Control Room to pick up the handlink and tell the others the current plan of attack.

It wouldn't take long to set things up. He could relay what Alia said to Sam and what Sam said to her. All Sam needed for a visual was for Alia to have contact with Al. Alia wouldn't be as lucky—she wouldn't be able to see everything; they didn't have time to try to set that up—but that didn't matter. Alia, as far as he knew, had at least seen a picture of Sam. Sam was going off of memories. Memories that weren't, if Al understood correctly, entirely just memories. After all, how could you really explain remembering something that hadn't actually happened?

It was like the changes Ziggy recorded and their memories around those events. They didn't feel things shift. Well, not ordinarily. There had been one time, just the once, when Al had witnessed the shift, had seen the indirect effect of Sam's change and been able to recognize the change for what it was, and that had been before they'd leaped together. He wasn't usually so privileged with that sort of thing, though; usually, he was as clueless as the rest of them until the file came across his desk. Ziggy was the only one who really knew everything. Even Sam lost things because of his leaping—knowledge about his family, or his past, or the people he helped.

Sometimes knowing what Sam changed, though…. It was strange. It was strange to know that Donna, for instance, whom they'd worked with since the beginning of Quantum Leap, hadn't initially been part of their Project. It was strange to see Sammy Jo and remember that she didn't know her father, even though she worked to help bring him home every day. It was strange to think of what the Project would have been like without him—admittedly, though, Gooshie hadn't shown him all the details of that. He'd edited the reports to show the officials on Al's behalf. He'd said that some things even the Admiral best not know.

Al figured it was Gooshie's way of letting him spend more time thinking about Lisa, and he was grateful. It would've been a hard report to write up.

Granted, it couldn't've been much harder than writing up the report about the leap where Sam had run into an angel. Al still wasn't sure what to make of that. He'd been so sceptical, right up until the moment Angela had gone off and everyone back in 1958 had forgotten about her, Sam included. That…that had convinced him. But he hadn't bothered putting anything like about into the actual report. He'd stuck to the believable facts.

This entire mess was something else entirely. Ziggy knew Sam hadn't initiated it. From the sounds of it, she doubted even Alia had initiated it. At least, she gave it a low probability. Al didn't know the details of any of her analyses, but he trusted her. He could count the number of times she'd gotten it wrong on one hand, and she'd always managed to correct herself in time before. If she said this change that seemed to become more evident by the minute wasn't caused by either Alia or Sam, Al believed her.

He just didn't know where to lay the blame for the change or even if it was something worth laying blame to. Heck, for all he knew, he should be congratulating whoever pulled this change off. He just…. This was different from everything else. Whatever had changed was _big_. It didn't seem like it, but Al just had that feeling in his gut, and if he'd learned anything at all in 'Nam, it was to trust that feeling. It had kept him alive, even if he hadn't made it back to Beth in time.

Sam had tackled some pretty big things on his leaps. He didn't usually; most of the things he changed were small, things no one else would really notice. But somehow this change was bigger, more substantial, than even the change wrought by Sam at JFK's assassination. Al wouldn't admit it out loud, but it was frightening. Sure, Ziggy said things hadn't changed much, that there were only a few anomalies that she'd detected in Sam's leaps, but how much did that really mean? If someone could bring about such a huge change, maybe Ziggy's records weren't as infallible as they usually were.

He should have downed a glass of whiskey before he'd checked in with Alia. These sorts of thoughts went over better with ol' Jack Daniels.

By the time the Imaging Chamber was online and Al had locked onto Sam, Sam wasn't much further with the cat. This one appeared to be more stubborn than the last one he'd tried to get down. Al couldn't remember how many leaps ago that was. It didn't matter. Sam was just doing what he did best: helping out in any way he could. Even if it did involve getting scratched.

Al had a firm hold on Alia, but from the way she was looking around, he knew she was wondering if this had even worked. Sam hadn't noticed them yet; his attention was focussed on the stubborn tabby that refused to come in from the limb it was out on. To everyone else, Sam looked like a fourteen year old boy who had yet to hit his growth spurt but was stretching out towards the cat in earnest, cooing softly. The cat had hissed in return.

"If he's not responding to kitty, maybe you should try puss," Al suggested, absently noting that Alia had started a conversation with the Doctor again.

Sam jumped, but maintained his hold on the tree. "Al!" he reprimanded, turning around to glare at his friend. The glare melted into a frown. "Who's that with you?"

"Old friend of yours. It's Alia. The other leaper you remembered. Except she's not a leaper now."

"Who's she talking to? Gooshie?"

Al shook his head. "No, it's, um, someone else. The Doctor, she said. She thought you might have heard of him."

"Has he?" Alia asked, abruptly jumping into the conversation. "The Doctor said he probably hasn't. He said only the first time still stands, and that's the part Sam didn't remember."

Sam looked between Alia and Al. He couldn't hear Alia, of course, but he knew she was saying something; he'd be able to see her talking. Al wasn't sure how well Sam could read lips. It was something that had definitely been improving since he'd begun leaping, but Sam didn't get much practice. Al didn't often bring visitors.

"I don't think so," Sam finally said. "I don't know, Al. It's just…this isn't right, is it? I haven't been able to shake this feeling. That last leap, especially. That wasn't how things were supposed to go."

"You did what you had to do," Al said, holding up a hand to shush Alia before she opened her mouth again. "Arnold Watkins ended up alive, didn't he?"

"That's not the point," Sam argued. "It wasn't…the same. It was…. It's just a feeling I've got, Al. It's the same one I had about Alia. Now she's turned up, and Ziggy's confirmed that something definitely changed. How am I supposed to fix things if she doesn't even know what happened?"

"You didn't leap here to fix whatever happened with that change," Al reminded him. "You came to get that cat out of the tree so little Lucy Lou across the street doesn't break her neck trying." Sam frowned, and Al continued, "So you don't know anything about this Doctor?"

Alia's face fell. "This is just going to be harder, isn't it?" she muttered, her disappointment sounding louder to Al than Sam's apologies.

"But Alia might be right, Al. Maybe I'm _supposed_ to have heard of him. Maybe he's connected to this change."

"Alia seems to think he is," Al confirmed. He looked back at her. "Ask the Doctor what he wants to say to Sam."

"I can't," Alia said. "He's not here. When he realized we were in the Imaging Chamber, he vanished. I think it was intentional this time. He wasn't in the middle of a sentence or anything, and he got a big grin on his face before he disappeared."

Al sighed and looked back at Sam. "He's gone again."

Sam's earlier frown returned. "You can't see him," he realized. "Is he a hologram for Alia like you are for me?"

Al shrugged. "Beats me." He repeated Sam's question to Alia, who shook her head and tried explaining, and then he turned back to repeat her answer to Sam. "She says he's more like a memory that's come alive, but she's had conversations with him. I don't think you're far off the mark, Sam."

"But it's not like I can see through him," Alia pointed out. "And it's not…fuzzy or anything. Besides, he said he was stuck."

"You also said he kept talking about a connection. Alia, he might not have a handlink, but Sam's got a point. This Doctor's a hologram that only you can see and hear."

"But he's not my partner!" Alia exclaimed. She looked apologetic after her outburst. "Look, I'm sorry, but he's not. I know he isn't. Well, wasn't, I guess. I don't know. I just…. I don't know him that well. If he had been my partner, like you are to Sam, I would've known. I would have felt it. The Doctor's…different."

"Different from what?" a voice asked.

Al jerked his head around and saw, to his surprise, a man standing on a limb next to Sam. Sam, too, had turned at the sound, and was staring at the newcomer. But Al only had to see Alia's face to know who it was: the Doctor.

How the hell could he see him? Heck, how the hell could _Sam_ see him? They weren't even certain how _Alia_ could see him.

"No, really," the Doctor said. "I'm curious. How am I different?"

"You're the Doctor?" Sam asked.

The Doctor grinned. "That I am, Sam! You remember me, then?"

Sam shook his head. "No. But…how I can see you?"

"Because I'm clever," the Doctor announced. He flashed his grin at Alia. "See? Didn't I say? I get loads of brilliant ideas. This just happened to be one of them. So long as you lot are all in the Imaging Chamber, I've got a voice. And, I'm really going to have to ask that you hear me out." He glanced around. "Especially since I don't remember this. What are you here to do, Sam?" Sam told him, and the Doctor frowned. He looked at Al. "What was the last leap?" he asked. "Who was the leapee?"

Al glanced at Alia, wondering if he should say. She noticed his hesitancy and guessed correctly at its cause. "If you don't tell him, he'll just keep asking," she confided quietly.

They could just leave the Imaging Chamber if they wanted peace and quiet, Al figured, but if this Doctor had caused whatever change that had Sam and Alia—and, admittedly, him—on edge, the same change that Ziggy still couldn't quantify, then it probably was better to hear him out. Know thy enemy and all that. If the Doctor intended them harm, somehow, they might get an inkling of the danger ahead if they spoke with him now.

"Arnold Watkins," Al replied.

The Doctor looked thoughtful for a moment, and then his expression became distinctly troubled. "Not the Midnight Marauder?" he said.

"The very same," Al confirmed warily. That the Doctor knew about the leapee was more than a tad disturbing.

"But it _can't_ be," the Doctor exclaimed. "This isn't supposed to be the next leap! You're supposed to be in Mallard, Ohio, with Alia! At the prison." He turned his wide-eyed stare to Alia. "Except you're not leaping," he continued. "You're out of time." He turned back to include Sam and Al in his gaze again. "So this is where things start going wrong. The noticeable things. They'll start piling up."

"You keep saying things like that," Alia burst out, "but what does that mean?"

"It means," the Doctor answered, "that I really need you both to remember me, or we're all in a spot of trouble."

* * *

><p>AN: So, for anyone who didn't quite catch it, or who is a bit rusty on the names and places of the Quantum Leap universe, this is set right after _Return_. Unfortunately, what follows isn't _Revenge_, and therein lies the problem. Well, one of the problems, anyway. Incidentally, due to the timing for Project Quantum Leap, that means that, for them, _Splintering_ hasn't happened. Not that it would in their current timeline, but you get the idea. Ahem. Clear as mud? Well, I tried... Anyway, many thanks to everyone who takes the time to review.


	17. Chapter 17

The Doctor, Sam decided, was a rather odd character. For one, he'd looked rather enthused at the prospect of trouble, as if it were all a challenge set before him that only he could work out, but a challenge that he was certain he would best. For another, his explanations might sound inane, but he clearly knew what he was talking about, and not just in relation to time and being caught out of it. He was simply brilliant; he hadn't been present a full two minutes before he'd started instructing Al to make a few adjustments on the handlink which not only gave Sam the ability to hear Alia but for her to see and hear him. The changes were simple and effective, yet something no one else at Project Quantum Leap, Ziggy included, had managed to propose as viable. The answer had been under their very noses, and they hadn't seen it, hadn't made that connection, but the Doctor had seen it immediately. But the fact remained that as memorable as Sam found the Doctor now, he couldn't convince himself that that was truly the case. The Doctor clearly knew him, but he couldn't remember meeting the Doctor.

For that matter, neither could Al. Alia was the only one who had recognized him, but even she couldn't seem to remember what the Doctor wanted her to remember.

"I've met both of you before," the Doctor was saying again, "but only one time is important. Your first leap, Alia. 1965. October 9. Near Hillsdale, Minnesota. You leaped into Karen Edwards." He turned back to Sam. "You'd been leaping a while by the time I ran into you," he admitted. "May 8, 1969. Millbrook, Connecticut. As Bill Rivers."

"What?" Alia interrupted. "I thought Al said—"

"But Sam remembers that leap," Al cut in. "Don't you, Sam? Sam?"

Sam didn't answer immediately. He did remember that leap, yes. It hadn't been terribly long ago. At least, he didn't think it had been. It was hard to tell. But he could still recall a few details of that leap, and he also remembered that it had been the first leap that had raised Ziggy's flags. Something hadn't been right that entire leap. He done what he'd needed to do and leaped on, yes. He'd fixed what had gone wrong. But there had been something else that they'd never pinpointed, something they'd missed.

Apparently that something was the Doctor.

"I remember it now," Sam finally answered. "Pieces of it, anyway. But what I remember isn't what you want me to remember. I'm not remembering what happened before the change."

"So you can feel that," the Doctor mused. "I wasn't sure. But it's good that you can; it means you can differentiate time into the proper levels, at least if it's basic enough, and all I'm asking is for you to look at two different levels and recall what happened on the hidden one."

"But how can we do that when you don't give us any information?" Alia asked.

"I'm telling you all I can," the Doctor said. "It's not safe if I tell you everything. Doesn't count; you'd be remembering what I told you, not what happened. There's a difference, and you can't cheat with this. I rather liked the world the way it was."

"I didn't, from what I recall of it," Alia said. "I prefer this one."

The Doctor sighed. "I'm sorry. Really, I am. But you have a role to play, Alia, and it needs to be played. If it's any comfort, it's not forever."

"But if we don't go back, if we don't reverse this, it doesn't have to be _ever_," Alia pointed out. "We can pull you out of wherever you are and you can start here."

"You don't understand," the Doctor said. "It doesn't look bad yet, but it's going to get worse. Everything was rewritten around me, so I don't know how things will play out, but the changes I've made thus far are standing, so it's likely the changes I've made in your future are going to stand, in one way or another. _Every_ change. Not just the right ones; this includes my mistakes. And, in about sixty years, I made a rather large one. Trouble is, in this timeline, it doesn't get righted. It doesn't get fixed. That's what this timeline is—the change, reverting outwards from the break. And this bit, the stuff that comes before, may not seem very different, but after…." The Doctor briefly closed his eyes. "It…won't be good, once the effects catch up. You won't see the worst of them—they won't come for years—but they'll come nonetheless, and no one will be able to trace them back to the starting point, and that'll just sow more discord and distrust and destruction and…." He shook his head. "It can't happen."

"How much time do we have?" Sam asked. Logically, he knew it couldn't be long, but he was searching for some reassurance. Leaping had thrown him into so many situations; he hadn't thought much could catch him by surprise anymore. It wasn't so much that he could expect the unexpected as that he expected to be surprised, but this situation had still managed to throw him.

"Probably not as much as you'd like," the Doctor replied. "But you do understand what needs to be done, right?"

"Not exactly," Alia said bluntly. "You just said to remember something I can't remember, something that never happened for any of us."

"But it _did_," the Doctor said, very precisely. "That's the thing. It happened. And, on some level, you _know_ it happened. All of you. Even you, Al. You've been out of time before, too. You can't honestly say that nothing feels the slightest bit out of place, can you?"

"Oh, no, leave me out of this," Al said, waving his free hand in front of him. "I'm not going to try to remember something from a different time. I have enough trouble keeping my own past straight and remembering which wife did what."

Sam nearly laughed at that—Al rarely _did_ remember which wife did what—but the situation didn't sit well with him. He had a feeling he'd faced this sort of thing before. Not exactly; not on such a large scale. But a small change, a change that spread, growing stronger as time went on—that wasn't entirely unfamiliar. This timeline, from the sounds of it, was a replacement of the original.

Sam had dealt with replacements before. He understood how something could start off so wrong but wear away slowly, feeling more right even though it wasn't, not one bit, and how he could lose facts, if not conviction, as time wore on. He knew what it meant to forget the true past, or what should be the true future, depending on the standpoint, and not just from being Swiss-cheesed.

This was still different. This wasn't like Edward St. John V and Alpha. He hadn't been directly confronted by the change. But, it was still similar. He hadn't let go of his conviction that things weren't right, then, hadn't believed that things had always been the way Edward St. John V had insisted they had been. He'd known differently, and he'd believed it, and he'd struggled to remember even as things began slipping away. He hadn't given up.

It had helped him. It had helped him put things right. It had helped him put things back to the way they should be.

He had to do the same thing now. He had to remember.

"…not the same," the Doctor was saying to Al. "See, when I met you, you were in your own time. That's not a strong enough connection. That's why it doesn't matter whether Alia can remember me from her Project so long as she can remember me from her first leap." The Doctor could evidently read Al's expression as clearly as Sam could because he added, "All right, I keep saying I'm trying to build a bridge, yes? I need stronger memories than that, stronger materials. I've met loads of people in their own time, but none of them remember me. I've taken people out of their own time, even, but that hasn't happened anymore. The things we did, yes. That stands. The effects the travelling itself had on those people? Caught. Suspended. Like little strands of thread from a string that are pulled apart and tossed aside. Removed, but not properly. They won't be until I'm dealt with, and I'd rather you got me out of here before that happens. But those should provide enough of a foundation for a strong enough bridge."

The Doctor glanced at Sam and then at Alia. "You see, then? The way you two leap about in time, you leave traces of yourselves. Small ones. Minuscule. Nothing you miss, I swear. Not under normal circumstances. A memory or two, usually, that's all. But me, I'm not usual. And the first time I met you, you two lost more than is normally taken. It was buried. Deep." He paused, then said slowly, "I need you to dig it up. It's the only lifeline I've got."

"Lifeline?" Sam repeated. "But there're two of us. That's two chances, isn't it, to get you out, if either of us remembers?"

The Doctor grinned. "Oh, you always were the sharp one, Sam. Yes, there are two of you, but you're both the same." He looked pointedly at Alia. "Two sides of the same coin, really. And, that's the problem. I can't have one without the other. It either won't reach far enough or it won't be strong enough."

"But why a memory?" Alia asked. "You keep saying it's all so important, but it doesn't make sense. How can a memory help?"

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "Memories help quite a lot," he said, very seriously. "They're important. They're part of who you are. If you lose them, you run the risk of losing yourself." He nodded at Sam. "Sam nearly lost his once, and not just from being Swiss-cheesed. Things got scrambled, all mixed up, and it created a gap, and all those traces he'd left behind came flooding back to fill the void, but they dragged the bits of other people along with them."

Al stared at the Doctor, looking wary. "You mean the time Sam leaped into Sam Biederman."

"Oh, yes," the Doctor said. "It can be a very nasty thing, that electroshock therapy. As a Doctor, I really don't recommend it for anyone with a healthy mind, especially at voltages that high. Sam's lucky nothing worse happened. But, I'm blathering on, aren't I? Wasting precious time. We've got work to do. Well, _you've_ got work to do, and _I've_ got—"

Sam blinked, but the image of the Doctor had gone. He looked at Al and Alia. "Can you two still see him?"

They shook their heads, and Alia added, "That's what happened before, the first two times. He just cuts out, like someone pulled the plug or flicked a switch."

"Or changed the channel," Al offered. Sam raised his eyebrows, and Al explained, "It was my second…no, third wife who started insisting that she needed something to put her in precisely the right mood for—"

"Al," Sam interrupted, "can you focus here, please? Things are changing. It reminds me of the time I leaped into Bingo."

"Bingo?" Alia repeated. "You leaped into someone named _Bingo_? It sounds more like a dog's name."

"It was a nickname," Al informed her tersely. "Bingo, bang—"

"Al!" Al closed his mouth, and Sam continued, explaining for Alia's benefit, "I changed something on that leap. It wasn't permanent, not yet, because it hadn't actually happened, but I set things in motion. I saw what the effects led to as soon as that change was in place, the second the likelihood hit one hundred percent. And then I started forgetting what had happened originally, what was right, what was real. We managed to put things right and reverse my change, so everything went back to normal, but I know what the Doctor was talking about. Memories are important. They can help to keep someone alive."

"Or keep 'em in place," Al said. "That's what we need to do with the Doctor, right? Get him back in place?"

"I don't think that's exactly what he means," Sam said slowly. "He said our memories of him are buried. Hidden. And so long as they're hidden, he can't keep his connection strong enough to reach us. We can't find him, or he can't find us. But if that connection is still there, we just need to uncover it. Al, I want to know everything that Ziggy flagged on that leap back to Millbrook. Go and talk to her and Gooshie and Tina and whoever else worked on with you on that leap. I need to know everything that struck anyone as odd."

Al frowned. "You think that jiggery pokery the Doctor had me do on the handlink will hold if I'm not here?"

"It should," Sam replied. "I shouldn't need long." He pulled a face, adding, "I don't _have_ long."

Al rolled his eyes at the reminder. "Oh, right. Susie Q's cat. She'll be asking after it, and you'll leap out the minute you get it down. Just hang in there, Sam. I won't be long." He hit a few buttons on the handlink, opening the door to the Imaging Chamber, and then passed the handlink off to Alia. Alia's image remained intact, and after a few tries, she managed to get the door to the Imaging Chamber closed again—or perhaps Ziggy had closed it on her when Al turned up in the Control Room. Either way, the room remained online, leaving Alia as Sam's observer.

"What about me?" Alia asked Sam after a moment. "I can't do anything. I can't be of any help. I can't sort out a particular memory like that, not when I don't even remember leaping in the first place."

"I have an idea," Sam admitted, "but I don't know if it will work."

"What is it?"

"Do you trust me?"

Alia was silent for so long that Sam was wondering if he should have asked. Perhaps his idea wasn't such a good one after all. Alia's reply, however, was a comfort. "I do," she answered, "even though I don't know why, I still do."

"All right," Sam said. "Close your eyes. Relax. Just listen to me. Imagine you're on top of a mountain…."

* * *

><p>"We're losing time," the Doctor said. He was leaning against the wall beside Zoey, eyes closed. He was resting; he'd needed a ridiculous amount of mental energy to maintain the connection. That last one in particular had taken a fair bit out of him. Sure, he'd managed to instruct Al to open the receptors of the handlink to receive a foreign ionic resonator signature so they could all communicate, and that had saved time, but he'd needed to concentrate on a few particular mesons and neurons for that to happen. When something had shifted on this end, his focus had snapped and he'd been forced back here.<p>

"What's your real reason for needing both of them to remember?" Zoey asked, ignoring the Doctor's comment.

The Doctor sighed wearily. "That was my reason," he answered.

"Then it wasn't your entire reason, or the only one."

When had _she_ gotten to know him so well? After he'd taken a few trips inside her head? She hadn't walked into _his_. Even if she _had_, he'd been ready for it; he'd had a few safe memories pushed right up in case she got a bit curious. But he hadn't felt her poking around. Granted, he'd been a bit busy….

"You've got a connection with Alia," the Doctor explained, "but strong as that connection is, I can't get any closer to them than I have using it before. But me, I've got a connection with Sam. Just a tiny one. Just the trace that he left behind when he leaped into me."

"He leaped into _you_?" The shuffling told the Doctor that Zoey had shifted to look at him. "Is that why you know so much about this Project? Because you spent some time at his?"

"No," the Doctor replied. "My answer to that's the same as it's always been: I'm clever." He stopped for a moment, then continued his original explanation. "Point is, Sam left a bit of himself behind that I can access. I couldn't use it to reach him like I used yours to get to Alia; the connection isn't strong enough for that. But it _is_ strong enough to pull me out if I combine it with your connection to Alia and draw on the connection between the two of them." Not to mention that his connection with Sam allowed him to draw on the one between Sam and Al, allowing everyone in the Imaging Chamber to see him—but Zoey didn't need to know all of that.

"They aren't connected," Zoey said immediately. She made a clear sound of disgust. "Why I _bother_ listening to you—"

"They're not connected _yet_," the Doctor continued, interrupting her, "but they will be. You won't be able to stop it. If Al wanted to, he wouldn't be able to stop it. The connection's not the same, but it's there. That's why they're two sides of the same coin, not because Sam's righting wrongs and Alia's wronging rights. Well, all right, yes, that does play into it, but it's not the main reason, not really. Not if you look below the surface." The Doctor opened his eyes and turned his head to Zoey, adding, "And I spend an awful lot of time looking at what's beneath the surface."

She gave him a look. He'd been with her long enough that he knew what she wanted. A real explanation, by her terms. Except, she was more likely than anyone else to come out of this knowing what had happened. Well, providing they _did_ come out of it. But, assuming they did, assuming they weren't wiped out or woven back into the new timeline, she'd remember things. Since she hadn't been fully integrated into the new timeline, she hadn't experienced a new level; she'd just looked at one, briefly, from the sidelines. The only ones who would have an inkling of this would be those like the ones who would, hopefully, help them out of this.

Still, if Zoey was going to remember, he didn't want to tell her that, providing everything went as it should, her Project would be losing its leaper.

So, being as resourceful as always, the Doctor chose not to enlighten Zoey and instead changed the subject. "Look, I don't know if I can get back there. It's getting harder each time. I've done all I can. We're back to playing the waiting game."

He really didn't like waiting. Well, he only liked it under certain circumstances. He much preferred to be doing something. Unfortunately, he suspected that waiting was all he could do now. It felt funny to be waiting, though. They weren't waiting for time to pass; it wasn't, not here, not really. Here, things were static. The air, the temperature, time itself—the only things that moved were him and Zoey, and they were caught anyway. Trapped. Waiting for a lifeline that might never come, or for the end of it all. He really didn't know which would come first.

* * *

><p>"He was by the well," Alia said softly. "I didn't think he was real. I didn't think he could be. He must have known what I was going to do." She opened her eyes. "I remember everything, Sam." She paused, then amended, "Well, everything about that leap, at least." She smiled at him. "You were right."<p>

Sam smiled in return. He'd hoped putting Alia up on the mountain would give her a clear view of the world around her, and it had. She'd been able to catch a glimpse of a past reality through the cracks. She'd found a chink in _this_ reality and seen through to a previous possibility. She had, as far as Sam could tell, drawn a link between the buried reality and their own.

It was the first step to getting the Doctor out from wherever he was. Sam, however, wasn't sure how easy it would be to finish everything. It came down to him, he knew. He had to remember. But, unlike Alia, he found it more difficult to differentiate between the two realities. He had always been leaping; she hadn't. He'd been on a leap to Millbrook, Connecticut, and never run into this Doctor. Every time he turned his thoughts back there, all he could remember was the leap from this reality.

Remembering wasn't going to be as easy for him. He'd been able to hypnotize Alia, but they hadn't time to get anyone in to try it on him. He could only stall on this leap for so long, and once he leaped, it might be too late. Circumstances would have changed.

But what had the Doctor said? He wasn't supposed to be here anyway. He was supposed to be somewhere else, somewhere with Alia. That was why this leap felt wrong. It was out of order.

He knew that feeling well. Not just on this leap, or the last one. He'd noticed it back in Millbrook, too, and he knew it wasn't just a result of being Swiss-cheesed. There were other instances, too, of course, but none had ever felt quite so strong. He'd known something was off. Ziggy had confirmed it. Neither of them could have guessed the cause, and even though he now knew it for certain, it still threw him.

He didn't pretend to _understand_ time, not really. He knew concepts about it, and facts, and had memorized models and theories and come up with one of his own, but he knew that any understanding he did have of it was only of one tiny facet. He'd been able to extrapolate from that knowledge and design Quantum Leap, but he knew he hadn't gotten all the variables. If he had, he would've been able to leap home. But he hadn't.

Something, or someone, was leaping him around, and whoever—whatever—it was had known that he hadn't known enough, that he'd still been in over his head, and that was why he found himself righting wrongs.

But balance, Sam knew, was as important in nature as entropy. If he'd had any doubt of it before, the look on Alia's face as she'd recalled her first leap had confirmed his suspicion. She'd tried to put up a brave front, but he'd been leaping long enough to be able to see right through it. She'd looked horrified, sickened, struck by a realization that whatever vague impressions she'd had of her life leaping were all too true. If he was a pawn for Good, she had been a pawn for Evil. Or, at least, that had been the original intention.

Hadn't it?

Sam sighed and closed his eyes. If he'd learned anything from leaping, it was that something that looked easy and clear-cut wasn't. He might never find out who or what was leaping him around, and though the possibility terrified him, he knew he might never get back home. But he did his best to put things right wherever he was, and he knew that would never change, whether he was leaping or not. And this time, he had it easy. All he had to do to fix things was to remember something.

Sam Beckett had a phenomenal mind and a photographic memory, but leaping had taken its toll. He couldn't always remember the important things. His last name, his brother…. He usually needed Al to remind him, to give him a hint. The only hint the Doctor had given was where he had leaped and who he had leaped into.

There were different levels of time, the Doctor had said. He needed to differentiate them and remember the hidden one. He needed to remember what had felt wrong, and he needed to figure out why, and if he thought about it, he should be able to figure it out. He should be able to pinpoint the change.

"Sam?" Alia asked quietly. "Are you having any luck?"

Sam opened his eyes and shook his head. "I need something else to trigger my memory of the original situation. Things would have been different if the Doctor was there. They had to have been. But even though I got in a bit of a mess trying to sort everything out, it turned out that all I had leaped back to do was to convince Jack to stop gambling. His wife would have left him otherwise."

Alia was frowning now. "You mean Jack and Janet Selvin?"

"I think so," Sam agreed. "Why?"

"Janet did leave him, in '74," Alia said. "That's what Bill told me, anyway. That's when Jack stopped teaching. He was still gambling, Sam. It ruined his reputation."

"But that's what I leaped back to change!" Sam protested.

"Then it didn't work."

"But I wouldn't have leaped if I hadn't changed history."

Alia shrugged. "Maybe it changed back."

"_I just nudge history back onto its proper course every once in a while."_ Sam could hear the Doctor's words in his head, clear as day. He looked at Alia in astonishment. "That's what the Doctor does," he said. "He doesn't change things, like us. He keeps history on track, the way it's supposed to be."

"Then what's supposed to be happening when we're leaping?" Alia asked.

"We just change small things," Sam said. "Never anything as big as this. Maybe that's why my change didn't hold. I changed the wrong thing, and history just adjusted itself and changed back because the thing I changed wasn't permanent. The Doctor must usually keep the big things in line. The small ones don't necessarily matter as much, so long as it all adds up to the same thing. Alia, whatever I leaped back there to do, I didn't do it. Whatever the reason was, I didn't accomplish what I'd leaped in to do because the Doctor wasn't there."

"Maybe he had to be there," Alia suggested. "Maybe he was the reason you leaped there."

Her words stirred something in the back of his mind, something loosened by his earlier recollection of the Doctor's words. Sam looked at Alia with a wide grin as the pieces clicked into place. "You're right," he said. It was all coming back now, the more he thought about it. It all fit. "I remember."

* * *

><p>AN: If anyone noticed that it looks like the Doctor changed his tune regarding whether Zoey would remember anything, if you look carefully, you'll realize he made assumptions the first time, and he has now adjusted those assumptions, so he's come out with a different outcome, providing what he thinks will happen does happen. Okay, that probably made about as much sense as some of the time explanations…. Anyway, thanks to those who are still reading and reviewing this.


	18. Chapter 18

The Doctor wasn't sure when he first became aware of the change. It was gradual, and he'd ignored it at first, putting it off as something else, but now there was no denying it. He turned to Zoey with a grin. "I think our ride's here," he said. "Better hang on."

"To what?" Zoey asked dryly, waving a hand at the room. "The wall? The floor? I'm certainly not grabbing hold of _you_."

"Vile as ever; that's the spirit!" The Doctor snatched up the handlink and shoved it in his trousers pocket next to his sonic screwdriver. They couldn't afford to leave anything behind if this worked. "You ready?" he asked Zoey again. She rolled her eyes, and he grabbed her hand. Just in case.

She stopped trying to pry off his fingers when their prison began to shake.

"Is this part of your plan?" she asked him, sounding just the slightest bit alarmed. Or perhaps that was disgust in her voice; bit hard to tell with her.

"Well, no," the Doctor admitted honestly, "but if you don't like roller coasters, you might want to close your eyes, because I have the distinct feeling we're going to get a whirlwind tour of memory lane on our way back." He wasn't terribly worried, himself. He'd gone through this sort of thing, if not this exact thing, before. As for his guess about memory lane, well, he'd had his bridge built of memories and images. He hadn't really expected _not_ to get a glimpse. Thankfully, it would all go by so quickly that he doubted Zoey would pick up more than a blur of colour and some general background noise; she certainly wasn't in any shape to pick up anything concrete. Their time in solitary confinement had taken its toll on her, even if she tried not to show it.

Hold on, though. He couldn't really call it _solitary_ confinement if they were confined together, could he? But, then again, they had been isolated from everyone _else_….

No matter. He had other things to worry about, the most prominent one being the fact that he had to pull them back to the proper reality before they were dragged into the one Alia and Sam and everyone else was currently occupying. Luckily, he'd been able to rest while he waited, and he was feeling confident that he'd be able to do it, much more confident than he'd felt when he'd first realized that time was cracking or even when he realized there was a very, very slight chance that he might survive.

The Doctor risked one more glance at Zoey. She seemed fine, and unlikely to let go of him. That was good; he couldn't afford to lose her, and if he ventured out into the temporal plane like he needed to, he wouldn't be able to keep an eye on her. With that in mind, the Doctor turned his attention and his energies to the state of the timeline.

He supposed he really shouldn't have been surprised to find things so unstable, but after staring at blank walls for so long, any disorder looked terrible. And time, right now, was no different. It looked to be in tatters. Tattered and torn, but not cracked and crumbled. Funny. He wouldn't have thought he'd gotten that wrong. But maybe—oh, no, there it was. That thread, right there. That line was more substantial, and it was the one showing the most signs of wear. He could see the cracks now.

He could also see, from this vantage point, the scarring. He could see where things had fallen apart and where he'd spliced them together. He could see the cuts that had been made and the bits he'd tied together to make everything fit again. He could see the pieces he'd trimmed away and the bits that had crumbled off once the cracking had begun. It wasn't as bad as he'd thought, considering. Half of the things that were falling off it were merely the bits he'd used to patch it all together in the first place, but he'd had to stretch some of those minutes to cover the cracks. He'd known, after the second, third time he'd patched the cracks, that his work wouldn't hold, so he'd stopped expecting it to.

What he hadn't expected was seeing how tattered the other timeline was. It had literally been torn apart, pieces linked haphazardly into the original timeline. Most of those bridges were changes, things that didn't stand in the original timeline, but the bridge he stood on now had been crafted. It looked a bit precarious, admittedly, but it was strong enough to hold him, and strong enough to stay in place despite the current.

The Doctor grinned. Memories. He'd known that, once the leapers recovered them, the memories would be stronger. Strong enough, he suspected, that Alia and Sam would remember it all. The details might be a bit murky, but he had no doubt that the knowledge would remain, even after a few leaps. They'd worked to fill one of the holes. They'd found buried memories that the leaping had tried to steal from them. That sort of thing wasn't buried again easily, not once it had been painstakingly uncovered.

No matter. He didn't have time to continue down memory lane. He had to untangle the timelines, stitch up a few tears, and patch the cracks. Once he had things sorted on this level, he could go back and see how everything had settled out. With any luck, things would fall into place again.

He could only hope.

* * *

><p>"According to Lothos," Zoey said, consulting the handlink, "you should be leaping any minute now. We're ready to pull you back on track, Alia. We may not get you home, but we'll get you closer."<p>

Alia blinked and glanced around, trying to get her bearings. She cursed her wandering mind. Zoey was her only source of information; she couldn't afford to ignore her partner. But at the same time…. "I dealt with Andrew a while back," Alia said. "Shouldn't I have leaped then?"

"You still had to deal with Dr. Smith," Zoey reminded her shortly. "Since then, you've done so, and we have him here. How long have you known, Alia?"

Alia started, realizing that Zoey knew the Doctor was a time traveller. She wondered when the discovery had been made, but knew better than to ask. Besides, that wasn't the question that was bothering her, but she couldn't quite remember what _was_ bothering her, and that just made it worse. But she had to answer Zoey's question and face the reprimand associated with keeping that particular secret; some things were unavoidable. "I wasn't certain until I saw him again, here," she admitted. "But he's not here now."

"I'm quite aware of that, as I'm sure you know," Zoey informed her sharply. Alia winced, realizing she should have paid more attention to Zoey's words. "He's currently contained." She volunteered no more information, and Alia knew better than to ask.

She wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know, anyway.

"Go and check on Andrew," Zoey ordered, "and make sure Dr. Smith didn't manage to mess up your assignment. You don't need another unsuccessful leap on your record, Alia, dear."

No, she didn't, but neither did Zoey herself, and Alia suspected the latter was the stronger motivator. "I don't even know where Andrew is," Alia said. She hadn't seen him since…since….

"Then I would suggest that you _look_ for him," Zoey replied, making it clear that she felt that she was much too busy with things at the Project to find his exact location for her.

Alia didn't care. She knew she could get away with some things, and this was a point she wasn't about to concede quite yet. "Just lock on to him and tell me where he is."

Zoey rolled her eyes but did so. She was back in less than a minute. "He's revising again," she said. "In the library. I do hope the next time you leap into a university student, you leap into one who has the sense to surround herself with more appealing men. I haven't been able to do nearly as much sightseeing as the last time you ended up as a student."

"Pity," Alia said, not meaning it in the least.

Zoey's eyes narrowed, but she neglected to comment. Instead, she announced that she'd best go check on Dr. Smith and left the Imaging Chamber. Alia, relieved to be away from Zoey's evident disapproval, went to check on Andrew.

He wasn't, as Zoey had assumed, revising. This relieved Alia, given that successfully convincing Andrew not to enter the medical profession would have meant that he wouldn't need to revise for a test that he wouldn't need to write if he dropped the class. Instead, he had a stack of physics books in front of him. She recognized one of them as a textbook she'd had a few leaps back. Quantum theory.

"Trust me, it'll never make sense," Alia said, dropping down in the seat across from him.

Andrew, who hadn't seen her coming, jumped. "But I don't get it," he said. "That was a crack, wasn't it, what we saw?"

"That's what I'd assumed." Alia bit her lip. "What happened to you?"

Andrew shrugged. "Nothing. I walked back and forth, into the shadowed part and out again, and nothing happened. You're the one who did a runner, not me. When I realized you'd left, I came here to try to figure out what we actually saw."

"But I never…." Alia trailed off. She hadn't left, had she? Not intentionally. But whatever had happened…. She shook her head. It was too confusing to puzzle over, and frankly, it wasn't worth the effort. "It doesn't matter. Have you finished signing those papers?"

Andrew chuckled. "Come to nag me, have you? Who are you, my mother?" At Alia's unamused look, he added, "Don't worry. Everything's signed and dated and it's all in my backpack to drop off. I just wanted to tell my parents first."

"Then why haven't I leaped?" Alia groaned, burying her face in her hands. "Every single time I think I start to understand what's going on, the rules change."

"Maybe there's something else you need to do," Andrew suggested.

"How can there possibly need to be anything else I have to do here?" Alia asked. "You're taken care of, and the Doctor's taken care of the cracks. I should be leaping."

"Maybe," Andrew suggested hesitantly, "if you're not still here for me, you're still here because I'm here for you."

Alia raised her eyebrows, then realized what he meant and shook her head. "No. Don't start."

Andrew reached into his book bag, pulled out a stack of papers, and set them in front of her. "This is how I'm going to improve my life," he said, "thanks to you. You talked me into a career change. All _I_ have to do is talk you into forgiving someone."

Alia wondered if she should tell Andrew that her life as a leaper wasn't nearly as righteous as he was thinking. She wasn't Sam. She destroyed things. She'd gotten Andrew to drop out of med school, made sure he never took that upcoming test. She'd just done it a little differently this time, so that the Doctor's precious friend wasn't devastated. She'd still destroyed a perfectly good career for the kid. He probably would've made an excellent doctor.

Until the car accident cut his life short.

Alia stiffened, caught off guard by the thought. It wasn't…. That hadn't been real. Had it? Andrew hadn't noticed anything. No one _else_ was talking about things being different. It didn't even feel wholly different for her. It was just like something she'd dreamed.

But when was the last time she'd had the luxury to dream and hadn't had nightmares?

"You don't understand, Andrew," Alia said, purposely ignoring the other thoughts that were running through her head. "I'm stuck doing this, and it's the Doctor's fault. Even though he can help me, he won't. I'm tired, but I can't rest. There's always another assignment to come, something else that I need to change. It never ends."

"But didn't you say that the Doctor said it would for you?" Andrew countered. "I mean, clearly, yes, you were right about exploring the crack not being the choice you needed to make, but that means it's still coming, doesn't it? You'll still get your chance." Andrew stopped, waiting for her to say something and continuing when she didn't. "You won't see your choice when it's there if you can't bring yourself to look for it. You can't give up hoping that it'll come. It will. You just need have some faith."

He didn't know what he was talking about. He didn't know what it was like. He didn't know how _hard_ it was to believe in the Doctor's words, to listen to what he said rather than judge by what he'd already done.

"Have you been at this time travelling stuff for so long that you've forgotten who you really are?" Andrew asked quietly. "I mean, under a different set of circumstances, would you still be holding a grudge? I think what you're doing is brilliant. You get to meet all sorts of people and go all sorts of places and you get to live history. Why begrudge your opportunity?"

Alia didn't want to answer that. She knew very well why she resented this _privilege_ of leaping. She leaped into a perfectly good situation and destroyed it, over and over and over again. Ruin and despair and death were left in her wake. Even when she was pretending to be the good little leaper, like Sam, she was ripping things apart. Andrew just couldn't see it because she hadn't let him see it. She'd hidden it, the truth of her actions, covered it in a way that he wouldn't realize the truth until it was all too late. But by then, she'd be long gone.

"It's more complicated than that," Alia finally replied.

"Does it have to be?"

"What I do can't be simplified so easily, Andrew. Just leave it."

"It only can't be simplified because you're making it so complicated." Andrew slid some of the books he'd been looking at over to her. "This," he said, "is complicated. But I don't have to understand how everything works to see the influence you have. Is it so hard for you to forget _how_ you're doing everything and focus on the effects of _what_ you're doing? Alia, you've helped me. I can't thank you enough. Isn't that what matters?"

He wouldn't be saying that if he knew. He wouldn't be able to say that to her if he knew what she'd done in the past and what she'd end up doing in the future. She hadn't ever thought she'd be mistaken for Sam, but Andrew kept thinking that she was the one leaping around to make things right, and she didn't want to correct him. But if she didn't, she didn't have a good argument to stand on.

She didn't want to know that someone had believed in her and she'd turned that belief aside, even though she knew she should just be fair and tell it to him straight. She didn't want to see his expression change when he realized the real reason she'd been keeping up this pretence of being helpful. She liked to think she'd helped him, even though she knew all she'd done was mask her destruction, hiding it behind conniving words and persuasive actions. All she'd done was her job. She'd just been completing her assignment. He thought he couldn't thank her enough, but the day would come when he realized he should have never thanked her at all.

How can you thank someone for destroying your life?

As far as that went, though, that wasn't far off what Andrew wanted her to do. She'd been happy to be set leaping. Well, she had been once she'd been convinced that it would work and she wouldn't be killed on the spot, just another casualty claimed by the experiment. Actually, she'd never truly believed it would work, but she'd hoped that it would, desperately, if only so that she could escape the Project. Hadn't the Doctor warned her that it wouldn't be like she'd thought? She hadn't listened.

But the Doctor's warnings only proved to her again that he'd known precisely what he had been doing to her. It didn't matter if she would probably have ended up doing the same thing if he hadn't come; he had, and he was the reason she was leaping. Her existence now was cursed. She wanted what she couldn't have: freedom.

Perhaps Andrew was right; perhaps leaping had turned her bitter. She couldn't properly remember what she'd been like before she'd come to the Project. Becoming part of their experiment had changed her, and leaping had changed her even more. She hardly felt herself anymore.

But that stood to reason. She wasn't herself. She hadn't been herself for years. Right now, she was Grace Holloway. She would be Grace Holloway right up until the moment she leaped out, and then she'd leap into someone else, and she still wouldn't be herself. She wondered if she ever would be again. She hadn't seen the choice the Doctor had shown her on this leap, the option of simply leading Andrew to choose a different career path. What was to say that she would recognize the one he kept saying would lead her to freedom? If she missed it, she'd never be free.

She couldn't forgive the Doctor without meaning it. Lying might be a part of her life, but she tried not to lie to herself. It never really worked. It hadn't even worked back at the Project when she'd tried to justify things or to distance herself from what was happening. She'd never been able to convince herself. She'd thought, then, that it was a good thing. She wasn't so sure anymore. It would be simpler if she could believe her own lies.

She'd hate herself for it, though. Even more than she hated doing what she did. She'd accepted what she had to do. She knew she didn't have a real choice, no matter what the Doctor thought. She didn't want to be stuck on a leap somewhere just because she was too squeamish to do what needed to be done. But she _did_ have a choice when it came to her own affairs, and that's what this was.

She'd promised Andrew she'd think about forgiving the Doctor, but she hadn't. Not really. She hadn't had a lot of time. The Doctor hadn't asked for forgiveness directly, but he had indirectly; he'd asked her for her trust. He'd settled for her belief, but he'd wanted her trust. He'd known that she couldn't give her trust if she couldn't forgive him for what he'd done.

She'd never given it to him.

She wasn't sure if she could.

Then again, forgiveness wasn't as big a step as trust.

Perhaps if she started with this, if she gave her forgiveness, it might open her eyes. Maybe she wouldn't miss her chance to make whatever future choice the Doctor kept alluding to. Maybe she'd be able to make the _right_ choice.

Then again, maybe she wouldn't.

Andrew thought she was like Sam. She almost felt like it on this leap, given the lies she'd woven. She almost felt like she was helping. Forgiveness fell into the broad category of helping, she supposed. If she really wanted to help, to do something good, she could start by forgiving the Doctor. She hadn't felt this terrible, this resentful and bitter, when they could still pull her back to the Project, when she'd still had time to rest between leaps. She didn't know for certain that her lack of return now was his fault, though that was what she'd assumed, given that she'd gathered as much from Zoey and a partially-remembered comment of the Doctor's.

She also remembered, vaguely, what she'd told the Doctor after she'd gotten him out of isolation back at the Project, before she'd begun her unending series of leaping. She'd helped him because she'd wanted to do something good. It had been after that that he'd implied he'd be doing something to the retrieval system. He'd probably asked for her forgiveness then, too, even before he'd committed the deed. But…but maybe she could do something good now, again. As Andrew said, it was easy.

Or at least it should be.

Would she still be holding such a grudge if she weren't leaping? She wasn't sure. She couldn't remember. She couldn't remember what she'd been like before; she just knew she'd changed. She'd been crafted into what she was now as surely as she'd been crafting Andrew, changing his future. Zoey had taught her, turned her into what she was now, and leaping had strengthened it, made her actions second nature. She might as well have been a victim of a leap herself. The Project had changed her as much as it had changed any of the people she'd affected on her leaps, and all for some unknown purpose that she'd never find the truth behind.

Perhaps it would have happened even without the Doctor's interference, as he'd said.

Perhaps he'd been telling her the truth. Had he ever not? He'd never told her an outright lie, had he? He'd always said what he believed to be the truth, what he thought was right, even if it wasn't. Not the whole truth—she doubted she'd ever find out the whole truth—but truth nonetheless.

Perhaps things would be better if she forgave him, after all. Nothing could get worse; it only could get better, if there was any effect to be had at all.

"You're right," Alia finally said, looking up at Andrew. "Holding onto this bitterness isn't helping me. I'll forgive the Doctor next time I see him. He was only doing what he had to do, just like I do."

Andrew was smiling at her, saying something about relief, but she wasn't listening anymore. She couldn't. She'd realized, in a split second, that that was what had been holding her here, tethering her to this place. Andrew had been right; he'd needed to convince her to forgive the Doctor. She didn't know why. It went against all the reasons she was leaping. But, for some reason, it had been important.

But before Alia could fully process that realization, before she could say anything to Andrew, before she could even think about opening her mouth, she leaped.

* * *

><p>"It made me feel better, at least," Andrew said. "There's something about the finality of making a decision that gives me some sense of relief."<p>

Alia looked at him blankly. "What are you talking about?"

Andrew shrugged, self-conscious now. "I guess it's just me, then. Sorry. I just felt better when I made my decision and finished filling out all those forms."

Alia was frowning now. "Your decision," she repeated slowly. After a second or two, she looked up at him again. "So you're really going to do it? Drop out of med school?"

Andrew stared at her for a moment. "Grace?" he asked slowly.

"Of course Grace," she said. "Who else?" She laughed. "You're reading too much of that science fiction of yours, Andrew Milton. I think you're losing your mind. Maybe it is a good thing you want to teach; you let your imagination run away with you too often to be stuck in the sciences like me." She smiled then, and admitted, "Not that I don't have my own dreams. I do. And some of them are probably as crazy as yours."

She was back. Grace was back, and she was fine. Alia must have leaped.

Andrew grinned. "I'll bet you do," he said. "And you know what? I'll bet that someday some of our wildest dreams will come true."

"Only a dreamer like you would say something crazy like that," Grace teased. She got to her feet, winced, and reached down to rub one ankle. "Must've banged that on something," she said, seeing Andrew's look of concern. "But it's fine. Just a twinge." She looked around again. "Do you remember where I dropped my books?"

Alia hadn't come back with them, Andrew remembered. She'd said some nonsense about a locker, but she'd just been making that up. He didn't know what she'd really done with them. "No," Andrew said. "I don't remember you coming in with them."

"You were reading," Grace pointed out. "You didn't see me come in." She frowned. "They can't be far."

"Maybe they're back in the dorm," Andrew suggested as Grace continued her search.

"They can't be," Grace replied. "I know I had them, I just—ah, there they are! I left them on the chair. I usually keep it by my feet; I don't know why I didn't this time." She opened her bag quickly, making sure everything was there, and pulled out a piece of paper. "'Thank you'?" she read, looking up at Andrew. She handed him the note. "Do you recognize the writing?"

He didn't, but he suspected whose it was. It would explain what Alia had done with Grace's books and how they'd reappeared. It wouldn't have taken much for the Doctor to drop them off without their noticing; they hadn't exactly been paying attention to anything else. He wondered who the note was intended for, though. Alia, he'd assume, for everything she'd done, but there was a chance that the Doctor had known she would leap out. Perhaps it was for Grace—the Doctor _had_ said that she was a friend—but it was funny that she didn't know what it was for. Some future deed, perhaps? But that wouldn't make sense; why thank someone before they did whatever they did? Alia had just shown him that the future wasn't exactly scripted in stone. So maybe, perhaps, the note was intended for him. For keeping everything secret, or for listening, or even for convincing Alia to forgive the Doctor.

It didn't matter, not the details of it all. Grace was back. His life was changed for the better. Alia was out helping people, one step closer to her choice that would set her free from her constant leaping and give her the rest she craved. The Doctor was obviously fine, seeing as he'd dropped off Grace's books. Time wasn't cracking. Everything was fine; it was as good as, or better, than yesterday.

"No, I don't," Andrew answered, knowing Grace was still waiting for an answer, "but it doesn't matter. A little thankfulness never hurt anyone. Now, come on. I may not have a test coming up, but you do." He grinned at her. "Name the lobes of the lung."

"Oh, come on. You can ask me something harder than that."

Oh, yes. Grace was back, all right. "Bones of the foot, then."

Grace smiled at him, picked up her bag, and began her recitation. Andrew, who had finished gathering up the library books, fell in step beside her. Grace Holloway was fine. It was like she'd never even left, at least for her. And, whether she believed him or not, he knew from experience that even the wildest of dreams could come true. He wouldn't be surprised if, one day, hers did, and then she'd know just what he was feeling: amazement, bewilderment, joy, and just a touch of fear. Just enough to keep her on her toes, as he had been kept on his. He wouldn't tell her, not yet at least, but maybe, some day, if he ever met up with her again, and she had that look in her eyes…. Maybe they could swap stories, then.

He wasn't sure which would be more unbelievable.

* * *

><p>AN: No, it's actually not over quite yet. One chapter left. Also, as always, thanks to those who take the time to review.


	19. Chapter 19

"I already fixed the handlink," the Doctor complained, "and we've been through this before. I don't want to do it again. I hate repeats." That's all this was: a repeat. He was strapped into one of the contraptions in the Holding Chamber beside an unconscious leapee, and Zoey had shown up for one of her interrogation sessions.

"I imagine you've lived through enough of them," Zoey replied, looking him over. She was probably trying to see if he'd managed to loosen anything. When she saw that he had, she tightened it up again. "But don't think you'll manage such a miraculous escape from us again, Dr. Smith."

The Doctor glowered at her. "What do you want, Zoey? You know I'm not going to reverse what I did last time, so there's no point in even asking me that. You might as well just kill me and be done with it."

Zoey's lips tightened. "I have the distinct feeling that wouldn't stop you, Dr. Smith, and I intend to find out why."

"Good luck with that," the Doctor said sarcastically.

"Tell me what happened in the Imaging Chamber," Zoey demanded.

"I did," the Doctor pointed out. "The answer's not changed."

"I want a real answer," Zoey ground out.

"Well, you'd have it if you'd just accept it," the Doctor shot back. "I'm not a magician by trade, you know. That wasn't an illusion. Unlike other things around here, everything that happened in the Imaging Chamber, everything you can remember, was perfectly real. It was real, and you're very lucky that you _can_ remember it and even more so that you're even _around_ to remember it. Things may be fine now, but they very nearly weren't."

"So you keep saying."

"Because it's _true_. Is that so hard to believe?"

"It is when the words are coming out of your mouth."

The Doctor snorted. "You're one to talk." He waited, and when Zoey didn't press him, he changed the subject. "Why are you in here, anyway? Alia leaped out, didn't she? That's someone else now." He nodded at the leapee. "Grace is gone. I did my bit; I made sure she didn't wake up until this nightmare you built was over for her. So if Alia's leaped in, you're not planning on keeping me here, are you? Not unless _you_ like repeats. I'll just get out again if you do."

Zoey spared the leapee a brief glance, then said, "She'll be out for a time."

"You know who it is, then?"

"Quite. But I can assure you, Dr. Smith, that it is no concern of yours."

"Yes, but it is _yours_, isn't it? You should be off to the Imaging Chamber again, shouldn't you, catching up with Alia? I mean, she wasn't gone very long, so you might think you aren't quite ready, but everything's working perfectly. I don't have to take a look at anything to know that. The pattern's not broken anymore, so everything works out. Past, present, _and_ future."

"And how can you be so sure of that?"

"I'm _the Doctor_. Do we really need to go over that again, too? I'd be careful if I were you, Zoey. People might think you're slipping."

"Lothos, cut the lights," Zoey ordered sharply.

The Holding Chamber plunged into abrupt darkness. Oh, yes, everything was working perfectly, as he'd said. Just his luck. "Do you really think a little darkness is going to scare me, Zoey?" the Doctor asked. "I've seen scarier shadows than this." He'd run for his life from those shadows, and with good reason. He didn't fancy being stripped of his flesh by the Vasta Nerada. It would be a quick death, granted, but there was no coming back from that.

"Who are you, Dr. Smith?" Zoey asked quietly. She was standing right next to him now, so close he could feel her breath on his face. He tried to pull away, but she'd already made sure that he had no wiggle room.

"I thought you didn't put much stock in names here," the Doctor replied, "so what's it matter?" Without giving her time to answer, the Doctor continued, "Anyway, I've told you who I am. I'm the Doctor. I'm a time traveller. You're Zoey. You pretend to run a secret time travel project. Now that we're introduced, why don't you just get on with it?"

"I don't see why you insist on keeping this insufferable attitude," Zoey remarked. She'd walked around to his other side during his little rant. Probably trying to unnerve him.

It hadn't worked last time, either. "Well, you have to look at the context," the Doctor said. "Considering the context, my attitude's not too insufferable, is it? I mean, you _are_ holding me against my will, and you haven't even given me my suit jacket back. I do want it back, you know. I love this suit. And you can't do much with just the jacket, now can you?"

"If you don't want me to begin another session, Dr. Smith, I would suggest that you shut your mouth."

The Doctor didn't buy Zoey's threat, though he had no doubt she'd be quite willing to carry it out in other circumstances. But these ones? Oh, no, she wasn't prepared. She'd need the lights back on, for one, and he knew that she'd move him to one of the Observation Chambers before she'd work on him in front of a leapee. She wanted the leapees to think they were alone. It wouldn't do to show them another prisoner. "It's a bit hard to answer questions if I keep my mouth closed," the Doctor pointed out. "I thought you wanted answers?"

"Do you ever give them?"

The question took the Doctor by surprise; he'd expected Zoey to make one comment or another about his snarky remarks or to just continue with her questioning. He wasn't really sure where she was going with her questioning, though. This certainly wasn't her usual line of questioning. "Come again?"

"You're so proud that I haven't been able to break you," Zoey said. "You were bragging to me that you only told me what you wanted. Tell me this, then, Dr. Smith: do you ever give anyone any real answers to their questions, or do you just answer the questions you feel comfortable answering rather than the ones you should answer?"

"By 'should answer'," the Doctor asked, "do you mean, 'should answer or deal with the consequences of not answering'? Because I tend to find that not answering in those situations is probably better off for me. Well, so long as the questioning side doesn't have a good bargaining chip. Well, so long as I can rescue whichever poor sod went and got captured and used as a bargaining chip. But if I'm the only one in any danger, I usually do keep quiet, yes, because people like you are more likely to kill me once I give you the information than you are if I don't because you keep hoping I will." The Doctor paused. "Well, that all really depends on who's captured me. If you don't take that into consideration, you might as well be trying to follow rules that aren't applicable. I'm sure you know, Zoey, that you can't win if you're playing the wrong game."

"Are you quite finished?"

"Oh, I dunno. Depending on the circumstances, I could just be getting started. I just seem to have a bit of trouble determining the circumstances right now. Tell me, have you got a knife on you that you're just waiting to use?"

The Doctor wasn't really expecting an answer to that, but he had thought Zoey would say something before she did. When she finally did speak, she just said, "I'd intended to kill you, you know."

"Intended?" the Doctor repeated. "You mean that's not on the agenda now?"

"Oh, believe me, I wish it were, but it's not that simple, is it, Dr. Smith? As I've said, you're horrendously difficult to kill, and as you've said, I don't call all the shots. I can be punished just as easily as Thames and the rest of them."

"Oh, and I'll bet you have been," the Doctor said. "When Alia let Sam go, I'll bet both of you were punished." He paused. "And do you know what the best part is? As horrible as that experience was, I'll bet you that Alia would risk it again if there's even the faintest glimmer of hope that everything'll turn out. However much you managed to bury her true self, you haven't managed to change her core beliefs. There's hope for her yet."

"You think she'll leap home, then, despite your meddling with our retrieval system?"

"I think she'll leap somewhere where she feels safe, yes," the Doctor replied. "Eventually." He paused, then asked, "Why are you here, Zoey? You didn't just come to chat. That's not your style."

Zoey didn't answer. The Doctor heard could hear her fiddling with his restraints, but he was surprised when he felt them loosen. "What?" he asked. It wasn't enough for him to get out yet, but he'd manage it with a bit of twisting. He knew that she had to know that.

"Like I said, I want answers. I'm willing to bargain for them."

The Doctor frowned, then said, "You're not allowed to kill me, are you? You were _ordered_ not to. By whomever it is behind your orders."

"Unless you want me to strap you right back in," Zoey snapped, "you can keep your speculations to yourself. Answer my questions, Dr. Smith."

"I have," the Doctor insisted. "How many times do you need to hear it, Zoey? Time was cracking. You saw the effects of that yourself. Now it's not, and things are back to the way they were before. I've got everything sealed back up, and the pattern is back in place, so whatever is meant to happen will happen. I intend to make sure of that. Of course, in one sense, I already have, or the pattern wouldn't have been set again in the first place, so I suppose that means that either you let me go or I get away from you. Isn't that a cheerful prospect?"

"Whose project are you affiliated with?"

The Doctor rolled his eyes, but of course Zoey wouldn't have been able to see that. "Are you going to keep asking questions I already told you the answers to? I'm not affiliated with anyone. What makes you think I am? The fact that you can't get a fix on me? The fact that you can't make anything of what I keep in my pockets? Because that's suspicious, isn't it, the lack of any identifying trinkets? You can't even figure out my sonic screwdriver."

"Your what?"

"Little silver tool, blue on the end; you know, the one I was using to great effect around here before you confiscated it and threw me back in here."

"You call it a sonic screwdriver?"

"Yes, but only because that's what it is," the Doctor said. "Look, Zoey, some things don't matter. That's one of them. It's not like I can't get things done without my sonic screwdriver. I've spent years without one. I'm hardly incapable. You must have realized that from the time I spent here before."

"I never said you weren't resourceful. I wanted to know where you learned to be that way."

The Doctor chuckled. "Most of it's just experience. I've been around for a long time, Zoey. Longer than you think. Necessity has been a better teacher than any one place I've been when it comes to learning to cobble together whatever I need. But that's just common sense, really, for someone as well-travelled as me."

"How did you find our Project when you came the first time?"

"I'm a time traveller. That's where I ended up."

"You said you could control where you went, Dr. Smith. How did you find us?"

"With a bit of luck," the Doctor replied.

"Are you sure about that?" Zoey asked in a tone of voice that made it quite clear she didn't believe him.

"Quite. It would've been difficult for me to find it if Sam hadn't been around. I got a trace off of him."

"Dr. Beckett has never been here."

"Yes, and hopefully, he never _will_ be. I'd hate to think of the welcoming committee you'd give him if he ever did show up. No, Sam's never been here, but Alia has, and, as I've said, there's a connection between them. I used that. Happy?"

"Would you care to tell me how?"

"Not really, no," the Doctor said. "To how I did it _or_ to how those two leapers are connected." He paused. "Mind you, though, they might've been connected before this even began."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Well," the Doctor said, "for all I know, a couple of featherbrained Eternals set them up on this, playing them against each other. I don't know why. Well, okay, yes, fine, I _do_ know why, if they are behind this, but I don't know why they would've chosen those two. It would explain a few things. How they managed to go at it for so long without me noticing, for one, and how inevitable it seems in retrospect that I got mixed up in all of this, for another." He blew out a breath. "That's all speculation, really. I wouldn't pay it much mind. I don't suppose, if we're going to keep up this chatting, that I'd be able to get a cup of tea? Even some water would do. I'm a bit parched."

Zoey was silent for a moment. "How much do you know?" she finally asked.

"About what?"

"About our projects!" Zoey spat out.

"I know enough to get by, that's it," the Doctor replied, "though I seem to learn more all the time I spend around you lot. But that's to be expected, isn't it? I'd hate to have to say I never learned anything." He'd managed to work an arm loose now, and he carefully set about freeing his other arm. He imagined that Zoey knew—she certainly wasn't deaf, after all—but, for some reason, she wasn't stopping him, and he wasn't about to question it.

"You know something about the future of this Project," Zoey said, "and I expect you to tell me what it is."

"The future's not scripted in stone. I should think you would have realized that by now."

"Oh, don't take me for a fool, Dr. Smith. All your babble about cracking and what's meant to happen, what needs to happen—am I supposed to assume that's all for nothing? The future may not yet be written, so maybe it can be changed, but there are some things that you think shouldn't be changed, and one of them involves this Project. What is it?"

The Doctor glanced in the direction of the leapee. He couldn't see her, of course, but he could hear the rhythm of her breathing. She'd wake up to this nightmare soon enough. "If that's who I think it is," he said, assuming Zoey would know he meant the leapee, if not the fact that he'd just gone about calculating numerous impossible variables and concluded that this likely matched the timing of Alia's last leap for the Project, "you may not have to wait long to find out."

"You're not going to get out of this facility again, Dr. Smith."

The Doctor started to fumble with the straps that held his feet. "I'm a time traveller, Zoey. I don't need to get out of this facility. I can get out while inside it. Did you think of that?"

She still wasn't stopping him from getting free. He couldn't help but wonder why. "Your things are in my office," she said. "I expect you remember the way."

"You're actually letting me go, then?" The Doctor didn't bother hiding the surprise in his voice. Bargaining, yes. He'd expected that from her. He just hadn't ever thought she'd hold up her end of it, especially when he hadn't really told her the answers to her questions, or at least not enough so that it would satisfy her. He'd still been expecting her to stop him sometime.

"I don't call all the shots," was Zoey's bitter reply.

Curiouser and curiouser. He'd been as good as given that free pass he'd been convinced he wouldn't see, and Zoey didn't dare cheat and take it away. Then there was the fact that the break in the pattern had caused the cracks, which in turn had caused the break in the pattern. That put him in the mind of the integrity of the never-ending circle, except that things had been broken and wiped clean. Perhaps it was a bit more like the Ouroboros symbol, though that still didn't fit. The cracks were gone. Wasn't a trace of them left. Alia was going to face her choice, now, and judging by the effects that he was seeing—or rather, _not_ seeing—she was going to make the right one. She was going to leap with Sam at the end of this.

That had all worked out awfully neatly. He _really_ had to wonder who was leaping them around, and who had been manoeuvring _him_. He'd played his part as a pawn, he was sure. If he'd had any doubt, being given a way out erased it. He'd done his part, fulfilled his purpose, and now he could go on again.

He wondered what else had been so carefully arranged, what else had been put out of place for one unknown reason or another so that things happened just so.

When his feet were free, the Doctor eased himself to the floor, wincing a bit at the pins-and-needles sensation that the movement triggered. He could find his way to the door from here, but he wouldn't be able to open it. He didn't have his sonic screwdriver, and he highly doubted Lothos would be so obliging. Zoey's orders, as far as he could tell, were only to free him from the bonds she'd put him in. He had to escape on his own. She wouldn't have made the comment about his likelihood of getting out of the facility otherwise.

She hadn't known he had the TARDIS here, but whoever kept her in line certainly did. Lovely thought, that.

"Are you going to let me out of here," the Doctor asked lightly, "or do I have to find my own way?"

"You can follow me." Judging by the tone of Zoey's response, it was accompanied by a withering look. Perhaps leaving them in darkness wasn't such a bad idea of hers after all, though he'd assumed it was only so that anyone watching wouldn't know she'd let him go. He suspected she'd wanted to do whatever she could to preserve her reputation. His second—well, third, but second that they knew of—great escape wouldn't look good on her record, but it was a better pretence for her than to admit she'd actually let him go.

"Guards not on duty, then?" the Doctor pressed. No sense in leaving just to get shot.

"Not at present, no. This isn't a trick, Dr. Smith."

"Well, you can't blame me for being a bit wary," the Doctor pointed out.

Zoey didn't reply, but he did hear her making her way to the door and followed. It slid open at her command, nearly blinding him with the light. Zoey turned back to him and simply said, "I don't want to see you here again. Do you understand me?"

He did. She'd probably slit his throat herself if he turned up again, orders or no. He wouldn't be so lucky again, and clearly, in her opinion at least, he shouldn't have been so lucky this time. The Doctor made a mental note to watch his back extra carefully. They'd gotten him before when he'd had it turned.

He watched as Zoey went off to the Control Room, and then he headed to her office. He could only recall being there once, in his first few days at the Project, back when she'd asked him some questions under one pretence or another. They'd been trying to get information out of him, trying to figure out who he was and who he worked for, without divulging everything that was going on within their facility. They hadn't known that he knew so much about them to begin with, if only because he'd spent time at Project Quantum Leap as a leapee.

His jacket, as Zoey had said, was in her office. He checked the pockets and found nearly everything in place, including his sonic screwdriver. The only thing that was missing was the oiler. He supposed he really didn't need it, but he did wonder why they'd taken it. He didn't imagine that they had any use for it. Perhaps Lothos had recognized it as something that was out of its time? Or perhaps he'd placed its origin as Hillsdale, Minnesota, the place of Alia's first leap?

Or perhaps, the Doctor thought as he spied a drawer in Zoey's desk that was opened a crack, it had been confiscated for an entirely different reason. The Doctor eased the drawer open and found the oiler tucked inside. A souvenir? It certainly wasn't an ordinary choice of keepsake. Couldn't be a trophy, not when he was getting away again. Maybe a reminder of what could happen, if they weren't careful?

Ha. Zoey was more likely to pinch it to see if she could get any DNA from it. Not that she would, or at least nothing she'd recognize. He'd managed to keep that secret, at least. And secrets were important in this game, oh yes. They were important in any game Zoey played, and he had no doubt she'd played many, though he expected most were with unwitting opponents. He'd at least had an idea of what he'd been walking into.

Maybe it was a souvenir after all. A token. A game piece. She'd found him a worthy opponent. He'd given her a run for her money, after all. If she hadn't been told to fold, they'd still be playing.

Besides, he doubted she knew what it was, unless Lothos had analyzed it and Thames had found the information worth repeating. They wouldn't be able to make anything of it. It was, after all, just something he'd nicked from a pile of scrap in hopes of finding a use for it. For him, for a time, it had been nothing more than a souvenir, either.

The Doctor pushed the drawer closed again, leaving about the same amount of space as had been left before. Zoey may still know that he'd been poking around, but it didn't matter. He was fairly certain he wouldn't see her again. Well, if he did, he'd probably try to duck out of sight before she spotted him. This parting wasn't exactly on the best of terms.

Still. Things to do, places to go, people to see. A bit of patchwork might not be on the agenda, but he still had to nip back to 1987 to return Grace's textbooks. The last thing he needed was for things to change because he'd held on to them by mistake. The cracks had receded, yes, and everything was sealed up and holding and just as it should be, but there was already a dent in the 1980s; he certainly didn't need to irritate a sensitive spot in the timeline.

He didn't fancy leaving things unfinished, but sometimes he didn't have a choice. Sometimes he had to admit that it was better if he didn't poke his nose into things and investigate. He wanted to know who, or what, was leaping Alia and Sam about, and who had drawn all the strings to get them together, to keep pulling him to their lives. At the same time, however, he knew it would be best if he didn't. Whoever was behind it all was formidable, and he really didn't need another enemy.

He'd walked away from some things, even recently. He still didn't know what had attacked them on Midnight, for instance. Oh, how glad he had been, then, that Donna had chosen not to come…. But things might have been different if she'd been there. The stewardess might not have had to sacrifice her life. Donna may have been able to talk the others out of it. Surely she would have realized—

It didn't matter. That was done. It was over. He'd made sure that the luxury resort on Midnight was permanently closed, relocated to another planet. Sapphire waterfalls might not be an attraction there, but the sunlight wouldn't kill the inhabitants, either—or harbour something that enjoyed playing deadly games with a shuttle bus full of tourists.

This wasn't like that, but it wasn't like he hadn't tried, just out of interest, to find out who was behind it all. He hadn't looked very actively. He'd rather enjoyed the mystery, to be perfectly honest. He liked not knowing things, at least when he thought he could find the answers. Now…now it was different. He knew finding the answer wouldn't be easy, and that there would be a price to pay for that knowledge. He'd find out eventually, wouldn't he? Perhaps not in this lifetime, but surely in the future, he'd have the chance to do a bit more investigating.

Or perhaps not. Likely whatever was behind it all didn't want to be found and was better at erasing any traces of meddling than he was, and he'd had years of practice. Besides, he could see so many other things with these eyes if he went elsewhere than if he spent his time tracking this particular mystery back to its source. And, well, Zoey had been told to let him go. If that wasn't a sign to be told to move on, he didn't know what was. Yes, he'd like to ignore it, but he wasn't sure if he should, not now. He knew, right enough, that he had essentially primed the timeline for the cracks. Alia's leaping into Grace had only been the last straw. What had he told Verbeena Beeks? Humans loved blaming that last straw, ignoring the rest of the haystack involved and happily continuing on with blinkered vision. He didn't need to do the same, not when he knew better.

Besides, he didn't even know what had been keeping Alia in place. Something certainly had been. As far as he knew, she'd gone about changing history gently. He had no doubt she'd managed to convince Andrew. He'd seen them signing papers, after all. She was right. She _should_ have leaped out then. But, for some reason, she hadn't. He didn't know why. He doubted the cracks were the reason.

Come to that, he'd never found out how successful she and Andrew had been in searching for the cracks, or for traces of them. He hadn't met up with them again. He wasn't sure what they would have seen. He hadn't realized how far along things had been when he'd told them to search. They could have found something, he supposed. Then again, perhaps they wouldn't have been able to see it. Fickle things, those cracks. They had a tendency to blend in. He'd've noticed them earlier if he'd really _looked_. Andrew and Alia would really have had to look to see them, too, and not a lot of people could look closely enough. He'd thought Alia would be the one to spot it, but if they'd managed to find a crack that had manifested itself differently than he'd been thinking, or one that had begun to widen, revealing a piece of the alternate timeline—well, anyone would have been able to spot it, if they'd looked.

It didn't matter now, though. That, too, was over.

Over, and with nothing the worse for the wear.

But lessons had been learned, he knew. He'd learned a fair few, and he'd lectured Alia often enough, and Andrew had no doubt realized a thing or two himself. He'd given Thames a few things to think about, and Zoey had tried to get answers out of him without asking the questions she wasn't entirely sure she'd wanted the answers to. But more importantly, everything was back in place. He had a hunch that Alia and Sam were now both in North Falls, New York, and he knew they'd leap together at the end of it, and Sam would be able to cut the lines that tethered Alia to her Project, and Alia would be free. She'd remember everything, then. It would take some time, but it would come back. It always did, once the leaper stopped leaping. He wasn't sure how readily her first leap would have come back had they not encountered the cracking, but both she and Sam had managed to recall what had been buried, and those memories would be kept close to them now. A recalled memory stuck strongly in place when the memory was recalled while leaping. It wasn't likely to be lost again.

He knew what it was like to feel lost, to not remember things, though his experience had been due to a nearly failed regeneration rather than a version of quantum leaping. He knew the frustration of a lost memory, but he also knew the joy of recovering it. He owed Grace for that. She'd helped him find himself when he'd been lost. Had he ever properly thanked her for that, or for anything she'd done afterwards? He couldn't recall now; he didn't always stop to do those sorts of things, even if he should.

What he should do, though, is return her books first thing, lest the memories of the past distract him. He knew when Alia had leaped out, and if he centred in on her shortly before that time, he should be able to sneak in and drop off the book bag without drawing attention to himself. He didn't want them to notice him; they'd ask questions, and he wasn't sure he knew all the answers. He was used to leaving people with questions, but he still wasn't quite as used to being left with them himself.

Well, he did enjoy a good mystery. He could enjoy this, too. It had all worked out, after all. There weren't any ill effects, and rather than something being lost, something had been regained. The lost had been found, the lessons learned, the cracks patched. He couldn't really ask for more.

The Doctor slipped back into his suit jacket, fished out his TARDIS key, and headed back to his beloved ship. He knew where he was going next, but after that, well…. Where he ended up after that was as much a mystery as anything, and he'd never tire of that.

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><p>AN: Well, that's it. I'd like to thank everyone who's stuck with it to the end and especially those who have taken the time to review and offer me some encouragement, specifically Questfan, Jonn Wolfe, James Birdsong, secooper87, Elvaro, and Amazing Bluie.


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